Full text of "The sacred and profane history of the world connected, from the creation of the world to the dissolution of the Assyrian Empire at the death of Sardanapalus, and to the declension of the Kingdom of Judah and Israel under the reigns of Ahaz and Pekah, with the treatise on The creation and fall of man"

CD
CO

BMBBHBHi

THE

SACRED AND PROFANE

HISTORY OF THE WORLD

CONNECTED,

FROM THE

CREATION OF THE WORLD

TO THE

DISSOLUTION OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE AT THE
DEATH OF SARDANAPALUS,

AND TO THE

DECLENSION OF THE KINGDOM OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL
UNDER THE REIGNS OF AHAZ AND PEKAH.

WITH THE TREATISE ON

THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN.

SAMUEL SHUCKFORD, M. A.

RECTOR OF SHELTON IN THE COUNTY OF NORFOLK.

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

OXFORD,
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

M.DCCC.XLVIIl.

THE

PREFACE.

THE first and second volumes of this history, which I some
years ago offered to the public, do so fully explain the
nature and design of my undertaking, that there can be no
need of any further account of it. This third volume contains
the sacred history from the Israelites having passed the Red
sea to the death of Joshua ; and I have, as in the former
volumes, offered in it not only such observations as I thought
might obviate or answer objections to, or difficulties in, the
Scripture accounts of some facts of these times, but also
such hints of the heathen nations, as can belong to this period,
and may conduce to my being able to deduce the profane
history in a clear light, when I shall come down to an age
which may afford plenty of materials for a relation of the
affairs of it.

I am sensible the reader may expect from me some ac-
count of the Jewish year, which he will not find in the
ensuing volume. If the Israelites, when they came into Ca-
naan, had not been instructed to compute such a number
of days to a year, as might come very nigh to the true mea-
sure of it, they could not long have continued to keep their
set feasts in their proper seasons. The heathen nations had
as yet no notion of the year's containing more than 360
days a : but such a year falling short five days, and almost
a quarter of a day of a true solar revolution, it must be evi-
dent that the stated feasts of Moses's law, if they had been
observed in a course of such years, would have returned five
days and almost a quarter of a day, in every year, sooner
than the true season of the year for observing them could
have returned with them ; and this in a very few years must
have brought them into a great confusion b . Moses ap~

a See Pref. to vol. i. have come about before the barley was
b They must in a few years have ripe to be reaped ; and the Pentecost
come to celebrate the Passover before before the time of wheat-harvest. Pri-
they could have had lambs fit to be deaux, Preface to part i. of his Con-
eaten; the wave -sheaf-offering would nection.

2 PREFACE.

pointed the Passover to be killed and eaten on the fourteenth
day of the first month at even : on the same evening they
began to eat unleavened bread d , and continued the eating
it unto the evening of the one and twentieth day e : the
wave-sheaf was to be offered on the second day of un-
leavened bread f : fifty days after , or on the fifth day of
the third month, two wave-loaves were to be offered for the
wheat-harvest 11 ; and on the fifteenth day of the seventh
month 1 they were to celebrate their ending the gathering
in all the fruits of their land k . Moses lived almost forty
years after his giving the Israelites these institutions ; and
if all this while 360 days had been computed to be a year,
it is evident, that the feasts of the law would by this time
have gone backwards almost two hundred and ten days,
from what was the real season of the year, at which they
were at first appointed ; for forty times five days and almost
a quarter of a day amount to near that number. But we
find, that, when the Israelites came into Canaan, and were
to keep the Passover there on the fourteenth day of the
month Abib 1 , the corn was ripe in the fields" 1 ; Jordan was
in that flow over all his banks, which that river was annually
remarkable for all the time of harvest 1 *; so that the Passover,
and consequently the other feasts, fell this year at about the
times to which Moses at first stated them : and therefore the
Israelites must have had some method to adjust their com-
puted year to the true measure of a real one, or otherwise the
observation of their set festivals would in fewer years have
remarkably varied from their true seasons.

By what particular method the ancient Israelites regulated
their year in this manner, may perhaps be difficult to be as-
certained : however, I would endeavour to offer what I think
may be gathered from some hints in Moses's institutions re-
lating to this matter.

Moses, for the calculating and regulating the sacred festi-
vals, directed the Israelites to observe the month Abib :
this month was to be unto them the beginning of months, it was

c Exod. xii. 6 8. Levit. xxiii. 5. the rye were not grown up, Exod.

a Exod. xii. 1 8. ix. 31, 32 ; so in Canaan the barley-

e Ibid. harvest came on first; then the wheat-

f Joseph. Antiq. lib. iii. c. 10. harvest; and after these, the gathering

Lev. xxiii. 15, 1 6. their other fruits, the fruits of their

h Exod. xxxiv. 22. vineyards, and oliveyards, &c.

i Lev. xxiii. 39. I Josh. v. 10.

k In Canaan the produce of the m Ibid. See book xii.

earth seems to come on in the same n J os h. iii. 15.

course as in Egypt : in Egypt the barley o Deut. xvi. i.

was in the ear when the wheat and

PREFACE. 3

to be the first month of the year 9 : on the fourteenth day of
this month at even they were to kill and eat the Passover q :
the day after, or the fifteenth, was the first day of unlea-
vened bread 1 ", and, which ought to be particularly re-
marked, the first day of unleavened bread was always to
fall upon a sabbath : this I take to be hinted, Levit. xxiii. 1 1 .
The wave-sheaf was to be waved on the morrow after a sab-
bath s ; but the wave-sheaf was thus offered on the second day
of unleavened bread 1 , and consequently if that day was the
morrow after a sabbath, then the day preceding, or first day
of unleavened bread, was a sabbath. If this point be rightly
stated, it will be to be remembered, that the sabbaths in this
first month will fall thus ; the first day a sabbath, the eighth
day a sabbath, the fifteenth a sabbath, the twenty-second a sab-
bath, and the twenty-ninth a sabbath. A month was ordina-
rily computed to be thirty days, neither more nor fewer" : ac-
cordingly, if we go through the second month, the sabbaths
in it must be thus ; the sixth day a sabbath, the thirteenth a
sabbath, the twentieth a sabbath, and the twenty-seventh a
sabbath x . In the third month the sabbaths will fall thus;

P Exodus xii. 2.

q Ibid. 6 8. Levit xxiii. 5.

r Levit. xxiii. 6.

s Ver. 1 1 . The Hebrew words are,
naron mnaa, i. e. crastino sabbati,
on the day after the sabbath.

t Joseph. Antiq. lib. iii. ubi sup.

u Moses thus computes the months
in his account of the flood: from the
seventeenth day of the second month
to the seventeenth day of the seventh
month ; for five whole months he
reckons one hundred and fifty days,
Gen. vii. n, 24. viii. 3, 4. which is
exactly thirty days to each month;
for five times thirty days are one hun-
dred and fifty.

x Scaliger intimates the twenty- se-
cond day of this second month to
have been a sabbath. Lib. de Emen-
dat. Temp. p. 153. ed. 1583. which,
if true, would overthrow the order of
the sabbaths I am offering. But, i. If
the twenty-second of this month had
been a sabbath, then the fifteenth
must have been a sabbath also, and
the people would have rested in their
tents upon it, Exod. xvi. 30. But the
fifteenth was a day of travel ; the
Israelites took their journey from Elim
unto the wilderness of Sin, on the fif-
teenth day of the second month, Exod. xvi.

VOL. II.

i . so that this day was not a sabbath,
and consequently neither was' the twenty-
second. 2. Scaliger's opinion is founded
upon an imagination, that the quails
were given in the very evening, and
the manna on the morning after the
Israelites came into this wilderness : if
this were the fact, the Israelites, ga-
thering manna for six successive [days,
before Moses observed to them that to-
morrow is the sabbath, (see ver. 22,
23.) would indeed suggest the sabbath
to fall on the twenty-second. But how
improbable is it that the Israelites
should have fixed their camp, ex-
plored the country, found that they
could not be supported in it, mutinied,
obtained a miraculous supply from
God, and all this in the remaining
part of a day almost spent in travel ?
A supply given thus instantaneously
would hardly have been known to be
a miracle : they could not so soon
have judged enough of the country
they were in, to determine whether it
might not be the natural produce of
it. In the wilderness of Shur they tra-
velled three days before they came to
high complaints for want of water,
Exod. xv. 22. In like manner they
came into the wilderness of Sin, on
the fifteenth day of the month on a

4 PREFACE.

the fourth day a sabbath : and the day after this sabbath was
the day of Pentecost, or the fiftieth day from the day of
bringing the sheaf of the wave-offering y ; for from the day
of waving it, on the day after a sabbath, they were to count
seven sabbaths complete ; unto the day after the seventh
sabbath fifty days, and upon that fiftieth day they were to
offer the two wave-loaves and their new meal- offering z ;
accordingly, from the sixteenth day of the first month to the
fifth day of the third month, counting inclusively, are fifty
days, and the fiftieth day falls regularly on the morrow or
day after a sabbath, as Moses calculates it a . The other sab-
baths in this third month fall thus ; the eleventh day a sab-
bath, the eighteenth a sabbath, and the twenty-fifth a sab-
bath. In the fourth month the sabbaths fall as follows ; the
second day a sabbath, the ninth a sabbath, the sixteenth a
sabbath, the twenty-third a sabbath, and the thirtieth a sab-
bath. In the fifth month, the seventh day will be a sabbath,
the fourteenth a sabbath, the twenty-first a sabbath, and the
twenty-eighth a sabbath. In the sixth month, the fifth day
is a sabbath, the twelfth day a sabbath, the nineteenth a sab-
bath, and the twenty-sixth a sabbath. We are now to begin
the seventh month : and here I must observe, that Mtfses
was ordered to speak unto the children of Israel, saying, In the
seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a sab-
bath*. It may be here queried, whether this sabbath was
to fall seven days after the last sabbath, and be one of the
weekly sabbaths of the year, or whether it was to be a
common day of the week in itself, but ordered to be kept
as a sabbath by a special appointment ; and an answer to
this query is easy to be collected from considering the ap-
pointments of this season : the tenth day of this seventh
month was to be a day of atonement to afflict their souls,
and they were specially ordered to do no work on that same
day. There could have been no need of that particular
order, if this tenth day had been a sabbath; for, upon ac-
count of its being a sabbath day, no manner of work must

second day of the week : in about four six days, and then the sabbath was on

days they had eat up all that could the twenty- seventh. In this way of

be provided for them, and found ab- computing we allow the affairs " trans-

solutely that the land they were in acted a necessary space of time, and

could not support them: in this ex- this will fix the 4 sabbaths to the days

tremity they were ready to mutiny ; I have supposed to belong to them,

on the fifth day, the twentieth day of y Levit. xxiii."i5.

the month, and the seventh day of the z Ibid. ver. 17. Numb, xxviii. 26.

week, at even, Moses obtained them a Levit. xxiii. 16. .

the quails, and on the next morning b Ibid. ver. 24.
the manna: they gathered manna for

PREFACE. 5

have been done therein 6 : this tenth day therefore did not
fall upon a weekly sabbath. But it is to be observed, that
it would have been a weekly sabbath, if some special ap-
pointment had not here taken place to prevent it ; for, as
the twenty-sixth day of the sixth month was a sabbath, the
days going on in their common order, the third day of the
seventh month would have been a sabbath, and consequently
the tenth; but the tenth day thus appearing not to have
been a sabbath, it must be allowed that the third also was
not a sabbath day, and consequently that here must have
been some particular appointment, to cause the sabbaths
not to go on in the course in which they would otherwise
have proceeded : and the injunction of the first day of the
seventh month's being a sabbath, appears very plainly to
have been this appointment, and would always cause the
tenth day not to fall on a sabbath, but on a week-day, per-
tinently to the injunction of having no work done therein ;
so that I should think there can remain nothing further to
be considered, than at what distance this sabbath day, on
the first day of the seventh month, was to be kept from after
the last preceding sabbath. And I think we cannot but
conclude, that seven days must have been the interval; for
I think this was the law of the sabbath without variation :
between sabbath and sabbath six days they were to labour,
and do all their work; but the seventh day was to be the
sabbath^: and if this be allowed me, it will be plain that the
Israelites must have here added two days to the end of the
sixth month to make the sixth day of the week the last day
of it; for the twenty- sixth day of this month was, as I have
observed, a sabbath e ; consequently, if this month, like
other months, had contained thirty days only, the last day
of it would have been the fourth day of the week, and the
first day of the seventh month could not have been a sabbath
in the manner which Moses appointed : here therefore the
Israelites kept two week-days more than this month would
otherwise have afforded, and began the seventh month with
a sabbath, according to the injunction. But to go on : the
first day of the seventh month being thus a sabbath, it will
follow, that in this month the eighth day would be a sab-
bath, the fifteenth a sabbath, the twenty-second a sabbath,
and the twenty-ninth a sabbath. The tenth day of this
month was the day of atonement f , the fifteenth day began
the feast of tabernacles S 9 a feast to be kept for the gathering

c Exod. xx. 10. f Levit. xxiii. 27.

d Exod. xx. 9, 10. e Ver. 34.

e Vid. quse sup.

6 PREFACE.

in the fruits of the land h : this feast was thus to begin with
a sabbath', and after seven days celebration, it was ended
on the eighth day, namely, on the twenty-second day of
this month with another sabbath k . The twenty-ninth day
of the seventh month being a sabbath, the sabbaths in the
eighth month will fall thus : the sixth day will be a sabbath,
the thirteenth a sabbath, the twentieth a sabbath, and the
twenty- seventh a sabbath : in the ninth month, the fourth
day will be a sabbath, the eleventh a sabbath, the eighteenth
a sabbath, and the twenty-fifth a sabbath : in the tenth
month, the second day will be a sabbath, the ninth a sab-
bath, the sixteenth a sabbath, the twenty-third a sabbath,
and the thirtieth a sabbath : in the eleventh month, the
seventh day will be a sabbath, the fourteenth a sabbath, the
twenty-first a sabbath, and the twenty-eighth a sabbath :
in the twelfth month, the fifth day will be a sabbath, the
twelfth a sabbath, the nineteenth a sabbath, and the twenty-
sixth a sabbath, and the thirtieth day of this month would
be the fourth day of a week. But here it must be remem-
bered, that the first day of the ensuing year, the first of the
month Abib, must fall upon a sabbath 1 ; so that here, as at
the end of the sixth month, two days must be added to make
the week and the year end together ; that the first day of
Abib may be regularly a sabbath after a due interval of six
days between the last foregoing sabbath and the day of it.
In this manner Moses's appointments appear to carry the
Israelites through the year in fifty-two complete weeks,
amounting to 364 days, and this would be a great approxi-
mation to the true and real solar year, in comparison of what
all other nations at this time fell short of it : but still it must
be remarked, that even a year thus settled would not fully
answer; for the true length of the year being, as I have
said, 365 days and almost six hours, Moses's year, if thus
constituted, would still fall short one day and almost six
hours in every solar revolution, and this would have
amounted to almost fifty days in the forty years which he
was with the Israelites ; and therefore, had the Israelites
begun and continued computing their year in this manner,
they would have found at their entering into Canaan, on
the tenth day of their month Abib, that they were come
thither not just at the time of harvest, as they might have
expected, nor when Jordan overflowed his banks, as he did
annually, but rather they would have been there almost fifty

h Levit. xxiii. 39. i Ibid. k Ibid. 1 Vid. quse sup.

PREFACE. 7

days before the season ; so that we must endeavour to look
for some further direction to Moses's appointments, or we
shall be yet at a loss to say how the Israelites could keep
their year from varying away from the seasons. But

I would observe, that there are several hints in the injunc-
tions of Moses, that may lead us through this difficulty.
The feasts of the Lord were to be proclaimed in their sea-
sons 111 ; and it is remarkable, that the season for the wave-
sheaf-offering is directed in some measure by the time of
harvest : When ye be come into the land which I give unto you,
and shall reap the harvest thereof , then shall ye bring a sheaf n .
Thus again : Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin
to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to
put the sickle to the corn . The numbering these weeks was
to begin from the day of bringing the sheaf of the wave-of-
fering P, and therefore the wave-sheaf-offering and the Pente-
cost at the end of the weeks appear evidently to have been
regulated by the corn-season, which was sure to return annu-
ally after the revolution of a true year, however the computed
year might vary from or not come up to it: and the only
question that can now remain is, whether the Israelites were
to keep all their other feasts on their set days, exactly at
the return of their computed year, or whether their other
feasts were regulated along with these of the wave-sheaf
and Pentecost ; so as to have their computed year corrected
and amended, as often as the return of harvest shewed them
there was reason for it. And this last intimation appears
plainly to me to have been the fact ; for I observe, that the
fifteenth day of the seventh month is supposed never to fall
before they had gathered in the fruits of their land ; for on
that day they were always to keep a feast for the ending all
their harvest^ : but if the computed year had gone on without
correction, the fifteenth day of the seventh month, every year
falling short a day and almost a quarter of a true solar year,
would in a number of years have come about before the time
for beginning their harvest. And Moses lived long enough
to have seen it very sensibly moving towards this absurdity,
and consequently cannot be supposed to have left it fixed in
such a manner : rather the whole computed year was to be
regulated by the season of harvest. When the year was
ended, the Israelites were to proclaim for the ensuing year
the feasts of the Lord r , and they were, I think, to be kept

m Levit. xxiii. 4. P Levit. xxiii. 15.

n Ver. 10. Q Levit. xxiii. 39.

o Deut. xvi. 9. r Ver. 4.

8 PREFACE.

at their times according to this public induction of them ; and,
in order to fix their times right, they were, in the first place,
to observe the month Abib 8 , the harvest month 1 , to appoint
the beginning of that to its true season ; and this they might
do [as often as they found it varying from it, by the corn not
growing ripe for the sickle at or about the sixteenth day of
this month, the second day of unleavened bread", on which
they were wont to offer their wave-sheaf x ] in the following
manner : when, I say, they found at the end of the year,
from the experience of two or three past years, as well as the
year then before them, that harvest was not so forward as to
be fit to be begun in about sixteen days, they might then add
so many days to the end of their year as might be requisite,
that they might not begin the month Abib until, upon the
sixteenth of it, they might expect to put the sickle to the
corn, and bring the wave-sheaf in their accustomed manner :
this, I think, might be the method in which the ancient
Israelites adjusted their year to the seasons ; and I conceive,
that, when they added to their year in this manner, the ad-
dition they made was of whole weeks, one, two, or more, as
the appearing backwardness of the season required, that the
first of Abib might fall upon a sabbath, and the other sab-
baths of the year follow in their order, as I have above fixed
them. We may observe of this method of adjusting the year,
that it is easy and obvious ; no depths of human science, or
skill in astronomy, are requisite for the proceeding according
to it. The Israelites could only want once in about twenty
years to lift up their eyes, and to look into their fields?, and to
consider, before they proclaimed the beginning of their month
Abib, whether or how much they wanted of being white to
harvest; and this, with the observing their sabbaths as above
related, would furnish them with a year fully answering all
the purposes of their religion or civil life. And this me-
thod being thus capable of answering all purposes, without
leading them to a necessity of fixing equinoxes, estimating
the motions of the heavenly bodies, or acquainting them-

s Deut. xvi. i. I need not, I think, second, third, &c. Nomina mensium

observe, that the weather in Judaea ah initio nulla fuere, says Scaliger. The

was not so variable as in our climate, Hebrew word Abib signifies ripening;

and consequently that seed-time and and perhaps Moses did not mean by

harvest were seasons more fixed with Chodesh ha Abib, the month Abib, in-

the inhabitants of this country than tending Abib as a proper name, but

with us. the month of ripening, or of the corn

t It may be queried whether Abib being fit for the sickle,

be the name of a month : the laraelites u Exod. xii. Levit. xxiii. ubi sup.

m these times seem to have named x Joseph, ubi sup.

their months no otherwise than first, y John iv, 35.

PREFACE. 9

selves with any of those schemes of human learning, by
which the heathen nations were led into their idolatries, I
am the more apt to think that this was the method which
God was pleased by the hand of Moses to suggest to them.

I am aware of but one point that can furnish any very
material objection to what I have offered. The Israelites
were ordered by Moses to keep the beginnings of their
months as solemn feasts, on which they were to offer spe-
cial sacrifices 2 , and they were to celebrate them like their
other high festivals with blowing of trumpets a ; and they
seem to have carefully observed this appointment in their
Avorst, as well as in their best, from their earliest to their
latest times. In the days of Saul, these days were kept as
high feasts, on which a person, who used to sit there, was
sure to be missed, if absent from the king's table b . They
are mentioned as held by David and Solomon amongst the
solemn festivals . As such Hezekiah afterwards provided
for the observance of them d . The prophets mention them
in like manner e r and Ezra took care to revive them at the
return from the captivity f ; and it appears to have been the
custom of all the Israelites who feared God, to observe these
days amongst the feasts of the house of Israel, as is evident
from the character given to Judith, amongst other things,
for her care in this matters. In their later days the Jews
fixed the days of these feasts by the appearance of the new
moon h ; and great pains were taken to begin the month and
the moon together 1 . And this was the practice when the
author of the book of Ecclesiasticus wrote, for he tells us,
that from the moon is the sign of feasts^ ; and the Jewish
writers say, that Moses appointed this practice, and that the
Israelites proceeded by it from the beginning of the law 1 .
The LXX indeed seem to have been of this opinion ; and
accordingly, except in three or four places only 01 , in their
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, they render the ex-
pression for the beginnings of the months by the Greek word

z Numb, xxviii. ii. orum. Scajiger. Can. Isagog. lib. iii,

a Numb. x. 10. p. 222. ed. 1658. Clem. Alexand.

b i Sam. xx. 5. Stromat. lib. 6. p. 760. edit. Oxon.

c i Chron. xxiii. 31.2 Chron. ii. 4. i The English reader may see the

viii. 13. translation of Jurieu's History of the

d 2 Chron. xxxi. 3. Doctrines and Worship of the Church,

e Isa. i. 13, 14. Ixvi. 23. Ezek. xlvi. i. vol. i. p. ii. c. 8. Prideaux, Connect.

Hos. ii. ii. Amos viii. 5. Pref. to vol. i.

f Ezra iii. 5. k Ecclus. xliii. 7.

g Judith viii. 6. 1 Vid. Spen. de Leg. Heb. lib. iii.

h Talmud in Tract. Rosh. Hashanah. c. i. . 3.

Maimonides in Keddush. Hachod. m Vid. 2 Chron. viii. 13.. Tea. Ixvi,

Selden de anno civili veterum Judae- 23. Amos viii. 5.

10 PREFACE.

or n vtowvta, the term constantly used by the hea-
then writers for the festival of the new moons observed by
them : and we have followed the LXX, and do generally
call the first days of the months the new moons in our Eng-
lish Bibles. But if the ancient Israelites fixed these festivals
in this manner, they could not compute their months and
year as I have intimated ; for in a calendar formed accord-
ing to what I have offered, the new moons and first days
of the months would fall in no agreement to one an-
other. The most learned dean Prideaux has given a full
account of the manner of the Jewish year in their later ages ;
it consisted of twelve lunar months, made up alternately of
twenty-nine or of thirty days, and brought to as good an
agreement as such a year could have with the true solar year,
by an intercalation of a thirteenth month every second or
third year P : and some year of this sort the Israelites must
have used, in and from the times of Moses, if they had ob-
served the new moons from his times, making them the
directors of the beginnings of their months, and keeping
their feasts according to them.

But I would observe, i. That it cannot be conceived that
Moses had any notion of computing months according to
this lunar reckoning ; five successive months in his account
were deemed to contain one hundred and fifty days 3 ; but had
he computed by lunar months, one hundred and forty-eight
days would have been the highest amount of them. In like
manner twelve months only made a Jewish year, until at least
after the times of David and Solomon ; for had there been in
their times a thirteenth month added to the year, and that so
frequently as in every second or third year, neither would
twelve captains in David's, nor the same number of officers
of the household in Solomon's time, have been sufficient, by
waiting each man his month, to have gone throughout all the
months of the year in their waitings r : no man of them waited
more than one month in any one year 8 , and therefore no
years at this time had more than twelve months belonging
to them. But the best writers seem fully satisfied in this
point : "It can never be proved," says archbishop Usher,
" that the Hebrews used lunary months before the Baby-
" Ionian captivity 1 :" Petavius seems to think, not till

n Numb. x. 10. xxviii. n. i Sam. Menip. p. 731.

xx. 5. 2 Kings iv. 23. i Chron. xxiii. P Prideaux's Connect, pref. to part i.
31. Psalm Ixxxi. 3. et passim. q Gen. vii. 12, 24. viii.

Vid. Herodot. lib. de Vit. Homer. r r Kings iv. 7. i Chron. xxvii.
c. 33. Plutarch, de vitand. sere alieno, * i Kings iv. 7.

p. 821. ed. Xyl. 1624. Theophrast. t Chronol. Pref. to the Reader. Vid.

Character. Ethic, iv. Lucian. in Icaro Scaliger. Emend. Temp. p. 151.

PREFACE. 11

after the times of Alexander the Great, when they fell un-
der the government of the Syro-Macedonian kings u . 2. It
is not probable that God should command the Israelites to
regulate their months by the moon, or to keep a feast upon
the particular day of the new moon; for the law, if this
had been a constitution of it, would have been calculated
rather to lead them into danger of idolatry, than to preserve
them from it. The practice of the later Jews in this matter
prompted an author, cited by Clemens Alexandrinus, to
charge them with idolatry x ; which charge, though I can-
not think it well grounded, yet abundantly hints to me,
that a feast of new moons is not likely to be a precept of
Moses's law. I should think God would not have directed
him to institute any thing that could carry such an appear-
ance of evil, especially when one great design of the man-
ner of giving the law is declared to be, that the Israelites,
when they lifted up their eyes to heaven, and saw the sun, and
the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, should not
be driven to worship themY. The nations, whom the Israel-
ites were to drive out, seem to have served these gods, and
in this manner : and it is not likely the Israelites should
be required to do so unto the Lord their God z ; rather
it might be -expected that they should be instructed in a
method of beginning their months opposite to any show of
agreement with the heathen superstitions. They were com-
manded not to use honey in any of their sacrifices a ; not to
sow their fields with mingled seed b ; not to round the cor-
ners of their heads, nor mar the corners of their beards :
these were things practised by the heathens as rites of
religion, and therefore the Israelites were not allowed
to do them. The Israelites were to be a peculiar people
unto the Lord their God; and whilst there runs through
the whole law a visible design of many of the institu-
tions of it, to separate them from other nations for this
great purpose, is it likely there should be a direction for
them to begin their months with the moon, which was
worshipped by the heathens as an high deity? I dare say
this beauty of heaven^, lucidum cceli decus, says Horace 6 ,

u Petav. Rationar. Temp. Part. ii. ovre fj.eyd\-r]v Tj/Aepav. Clem. Alexand.

lib. i. c. 6. Stromat. lib. vi. p. 760. edit. 0x011.1715.

x MrjSe Kara 'lovdaiovs o-e'j8eo-0e, Kal Y Deut. iv. 19.

yap K?vot (j.6voi ol6/j.fvoi rbv sbv 711/00- z Deut. xii. 31.

rr/ceic, OVK firiffravrai, AarpctWres ayye- a Levit. ii. 1 1.

\ois Kal apxayyeXots, /xr^t Kal (TeAVjj/Tj, b Levit. xix. 19.

Kal tav /j.^i ae\T]vri tyavrj, aaftfidrov OVK c Ver. 27.

ayovffi rb \fy6/j.evov irptarov, oi8e veo/j.7]- & Ecclus. xliii. 9.

vlav &yov(riv, of/re av/j.a, ovrc 4oprV> e Carm. seculare.

12 PREFACE.

queen of heaven*, glory of the stars f , Horace expresses it,
siderum reginaS, was not a regulator or director of the re-
ligious festivals of the God of Israel ; rather his chosen peo-
ple were led into some plainer method of computing their
months, and that such a method as might so vary the begin-
nings of them from a determined relation to any light of
heaven, as to evidence that the appointed holy-days which
they kept, they did indeed keep only unto the Lord. The
author of the book of Ecclesiastic us observes of the moon,
that the month is called after her name^; but this was not so
to an ancient Israelite. In our English language the words
moon and month may have this relation, and a like thought
is to be supported in the Greek tongue, in which the au-
thor of Ecclesiasticus wrote his book. Mr)i>, the month, may
be a contraction from Mrjn?, the moon ; though I think it
more natural to derive Mr/uri from Mrjv, than Mrjz> from M?J^?7.
However, in the Hebrew, Jareach ', or Lebanah k , are the
words that signify moon; and Chodesh^ is the word for
month; and these have no such affinity to one another.
And indeed, 4. in the Hebrew Bible there is, I think, no
one text either in the books of Moses, or in any other of
the books of the Old Testament, that can intimate the
Israelites to have observed the day of the new moon in any of
their festivals. The Israelites were to offer their burnt-offer-
ings unto the Lord in the beginnings, not of their moons,
but [D^ttnn ^tZ?N"O] be-Rashei Chadsheicem, on the begin-
nings of their months; and the expression is the same, Numb.
x. i o. The Israelites are there commanded to blow with the
trumpets on the beginnings of their months; nothing relating
to the moon is suggested to them. And this is the ex-
pression which runs through all the texts of Scripture, in
which the LXX have used the word vov^via or reo/x^ia, or
we in English the new moons. When the Shunamite would
have gone to the prophet, her husband said unto her,
Wherefore wilt thou go to him to-day ? It is neither, we ren-
der the place, new moon nor sabbath ; the LXX say, ov vo^r]via
ovbe vdpparov' but the Hebrew words are, loa Chodesh ve loa
Shabbath n , it is not the month-day, nor the sabbath. Thus

e See Jer. vii. 18. Ezek. xxxii. 7. Joel ii. 10, &c.

f Ecclus. ubi. sup. k Cantic. vi. 10. Isaiah xxiv. 23.

S Carmen seculare. X xx. 26.

h Ecclus. xliii. 8. 1 Gen. viii. 4. Exod. xii. 2 Levit.

1 ?X' Vid> Gen> xxxvii. 9. Deut. xxiii. 24. Deut. i 3. i Kings iv. 7, c
iv. 19. "josh. x. 19. Psalm viii. 4. EC- m Num b. xxviii. n.
cles. xii. 2. Isai. xiii. 10. Jer. viii. 2. n * Kin s iv - 2 3-

PREFACE.

again, the Psalmist directs to blow up the trumpet, not as we
render it, in the new moons, nor as the LXX, tv reo^rjina ;
but, ba Chodesh, upon the month-day . In none of the texts
that suggest this festival is there any mention ha Jareach or
hal Lebanah, of the moon; for not the first day of the moon,
but the first day of the month, was the day observed by
them. It is remarkable, that this signification of the He-
brew texts was so undeniable to the Jewish Rabbins, that
they could not but own, that their observing the first days of
months upon new moons did not arise from any direction of
the words of the law?: they say it was one of the matters
which Moses was taught in the mount, and by tradition
was brought down to themq. It is, I think, undeniable,
that the Jews did admit the use of a new form of computing
their year some time after the captivity, which differed in
many points from their more ancient method, and which
obliged them in time to make many rules for the transla-
tion of days and feasts, an account of which we may find
in the writers of their antiquities 1 " : but the law, as Moses
or Joshua left it to the observance of their fathers, or as
it was observed until after David's times or Solomon's, seems

o Psalm Ixxxi. 4. The latter part of
the verse is thought by some writers
to intimate something contrary to what
I am offering : Bloiv up the trumpet,
says the Psalmist, on the month-day,
after which follows ["mrr D^ RD33]
bacceseh lejom chagyenu. The word
ceseh, they say, is derived from the verb
casah, to cover, so that bacceseh may
signify at the covering, or when the
moon is in conjunction with the sun,
covered, as it were, so as to give no
light. Thus these writers think this
verse to intimate the new moon to have
been a solemn festival : but I would
observe, the expression thus taken is so
singular, unlike any thing to be met
with in any other place of Scripture,
notwithstanding the frequent mention
of the festival here intended, that I
should think we cannot safely build
upon it. Others derive the word ceseh
from DD3 casas, to number out, and
accordingly render bacceseh, upon the
appointed day : but were this the sense
of the place, the word would perhaps
have been written not no 31 bacceseh,
but ND31 baccesea, see Proverbs vu. 20.
The reader may see what has been
offered upon this text in Scalig. de
Emendat. Temp. lib. iii. p. 153. ed.

Franc. 1589. Cleric. Comment, in loc.
and will, after all, find the passsge to
be obscure, at most but doubtfully
explained by those who have wrote
upon it. nv 1 ? is the same as n VI : see
Proverbs vii. 20. nDDH 3H is the known
expression for the feast of tabernacles.
Deut. xvi. 13. And I have been apt to
suspect that transcribers have misplaced
the letter D in the word caxeh, and
wrote HD31 instead of n3DH, i.e. bac-
ceseh, for hassuccoth. In the Hebrew
the letters of the one word might
readily be wrote for the letters of the
other. And if we may make this emen-
dation, hasuccoth lejom haggenu, will
signify on the day of our feast of taber-
nacles , and the Psalmist will appear to
recommend the observing two solemn
feasts, which fell almost together in the
same month; the one the month-day,
or first day of the seventh month, on
which was to be a memorial of blowing
of trumpets, Levit. xxiii. 24. the other
the first day of the feast of tabernacles.
See ver. 34.

P Maimonid. More Nevoch. p. iii. c.
46.

Q Abarb. in Parasch.

r See Godwin's Moses and Aaron,
lib. iii. c. 7.

14 PREFACE.

to have been a stranger to all these regulations. I might
perhaps say, that the Jews in following these were in many
points led contrary to Moses's directions. When our Saviour
was betrayed, he was apprehended on the night of the Pass-
over, after he had eaten the Passover with his disciples %
and carried early in the evening to the high-priest's house
first 11 , and afterwards before Pilate into the judgment-hall x ;
for the Jews who prosecuted had not then eat the Passover y,
and upon this account could not go into the judgment-hall.
They intended our Saviour's accusation should be capital ;
the law had appointed, that persons defiled with the dead
body of a man should be kept back, and not eat the Passover
until the fourteenth day of the second month 2 ; they judged
the persons who were to accuse our Saviour, so as to bring
him unto the death, would be under the restriction of this
law, and therefore they left off their prosecution until they
should go home and eat the Passover. On the next morning,
on the day after the Passover, they assembled, and carried
him again to Pilate, and took counsel against him to put him
to death a ; and in this morning passed the several matters
that are related to have preceded our Saviour's crucifixion ;
namely, Pilate's sending him to Herod b ; Pilate's wife's mes-
sage to Pilate, upon account of her dreams c ; Herod's re-
manding Jesus back again to Pilate d ; Pilate's then delivering
him to the Jews to be crucified 6 , upon which they immedi-
ately led him away, and crucified him f , and the next day
was the sabbaths ; so that in this year the Jews had at least
a day between the evening of eating the Passover and the
sabbath; but had they at this time proceeded according to
Moses's institutions, I should think the first day of unleavened
bread, the day immediately following the evening of the
Passover, would have been the sabbath h .

I have now offered the reader what I have for some time

t Matt. xxvi. 17 31, &c. Markxiv. 16 24. Luke xxiii. 26 33. John

12 27, &c. Luke xxii. 7 34, &c. xix. 16 18.

u Matt. xxvi. 57. Mark xiv. 53. S Mark xv. 42. Luke xxiii. 54.

Luke xxii. 54. John xviii. 13. John xix. 31.

x Ibid. ver. 28. h According to the Jewish calcula-

y Ibid. tion of the year, after they used lunar

z Numb. ix. 10,11. years, the interval between the Pass-

* Matt, xxvii. i. Mark xv. i. Luke over and the sabbath following it was

xxii - 66. different in different years. For in-

b Luke xxiii. 7. stance, there was a day between in the

c Matt, xxvii. 19. year of our Saviour's crucifixion, the

1 Luke xxiii. 1 1. day of the Passover falling that year as

e Luke xxiii. 21 24. on our Thursday. But it is evident, a

f Matt, xxvii. 27 35. Mark xv. Jewish lunar year ordinarily containing

PREFACE.

apprehended the institutions of Moses's law do hint to have
been the first and most ancient method used by the Israelites
for computing and regulating their year. I have much
wished to find some one learned writer directing me in this
matter ; but as I cannot say I do, I hope I have expressed
myself with a proper diffidence. If the reader shall think
what I have offered may be admitted, a small correction must
be made in what I have suggested concerning the ancient
Jewish year in my preface to my first volume : and if I shall
find myself herein mistaken, I shall be hereafter better able
to retract what I have thus attempted in a preface only, than
if I had given it a place in the following books amongst
the observations upon the law of Moses. I have taken no
notice of a sentiment of Scaliger's, which seems to be ad-
mitted by archbishop Usher ; that the ancient Israelites
computed their year in twelve months of thirty days each,
adding five days at the end of the twelfth month yearly, and
a sixth every fourth year 1 ; because it is a thought for
which I find no shadow of proof from any hint of Scripture
or remain of antiquity. Scaliger indeed attempts to com-
pute the year of the flood to have been reckoned up by
Moses to contain 365 days k : but, in order to give colour to
his supposition, he represents the raven and the dove, sent by
Noah out of the ark, to see if the waters were abated, to have
been sent out at forty days interval the one from the other 1 :
but Moses's narration intimates nothing like it ; nor will
any reader allow it to be probable, that collects and duly
compares the particulars related by Moses of the rise and
fall of the waters, and of Noah's conduct and observations.
The raven and the dove here spoken of were undoubtedly
sent out both upon one and the same day. As to arch-
bishop Usher's seeming to be of opinion, that the ancient
Jewish year was in this manner made up of 365 days, with
an allowance for about a quarter of a day in every year ; he
had computed, and found that a number of years of the
Israelites were capable of being made to answer to a like
number of Julian years ; and this led him to think they
were, as to length, of much the same nature. I need only
observe, that, if the Israelites computed their years in the
manner above mentioned by me, a number of such years

but 354 days, that the Passover in the * Scaliger lib. de Emendat. Temp,

next year would fall as on a Tuesday, lib. iii. p. 151. ed. 1589. Usher's Chron.

and consequently there would be three Epistle to the Reader,

days between the Passover and the k Scaliger supra,

sabbath, &c. 1 Gen. viii. 7, 8.

16 PREFACE.

will not much vary in the sum of them, from the sum of a
like number of Julian.

I intended to attempt in this place to answer the objec-
tions of some writers, who would argue Moses not to have
composed the books we ascribe to him : but having in
many parts both of this and the former volumes obviated
the difficulties which seem to arise from some short hints
and observations now interspersed in the sacred pages, which
the learned are apprised not to have been inserted by the
authors of the books they are now found in, I should
in a great measure only repeat what I have already remarked,
were I to refute at large what is offered upon this topic.
If the reader has a mind to examine it, he may find the
whole of what can be pretended on the one side in Spinoza",
and Le Clerc's third dissertation prefixed to his comment on
the Pentateuch may furnish matter for a clear and distinct
answer on the other. We have indeed an hint or two upon
this argument in some remains of a very great writer: " The
" race of the kings of Edom, it is observed, before there
" reigned any king in Israel, is set down in the Book of
" Genesis ; and therefore that book was not written entirely
" in the form now extant before the reign of Saul." The
reader may find this difficulty attempted to be cleared in
its proper place ; I shall therefore only refer to what is
already said upon it .

" The history [in the Pentateuch] hath been collected,
" we are told, from several books, such as were the history
" of the creation, composed by Moses, Gen. ii. 4. the book of
" the generations of Adam, Gen. v. i. and the book of the
" wars of the Lord, Numb. xxi. 14." It is something dif-
ficult to form any notion of the force of the argument here
intended : St. Matthew writes ; The look of the generation of
Jesus Christ?: can we hence argue, that the Gospel we
now have and ascribe to him, was collected from a book of
the generation of Jesus Christ written by him ? Spinoza
indeed offers the point which may perhaps be here in-
timated to this purpose. The books which Moses wrote
are expressly named, and sometimes cited in the Pentateuch ;
consequently the Pentateuch is a different work from the
books cited in it^ : but the fact is this ; Moses has in some
parts of his books told us expressly that he wrote them, and
this writer would infer the direct contrary from these very
intimations.

m See book xii. ad fin. o See vol. ii. b. vii.

n Tract. Theologico-polit. in part P Matt. i. i.
alter, c. 8. q Tractat. Theologico-polit. ubi sup.

PREFACE. 17

In the 33d chapter of Numbers, ver. i, 2. we have
these words : These are the journeys of the children of Israel,
which went forth out of the land of Egypt, with their armies,
under the hand of Moses and Aaron. And Moses wrote their
goings out according to tfieir journeys, by the commandment of
the Lord: and these arc their journeys according to their goings
out, fyc. Let us now suppose that these words, and what
follow them, to the end of the 4gth verse of this chapter,
were perhaps Moses's conclusion of the book he wrote upon
this subject, whether he called it Motzah, a word answering
to Exodus, or Shemoth, i. e. The look of names, as the
Jews seem afterwards to have nominated it, or whether
he really affixed no title to it. Let us suppose it to have
begun from the first chapter of Exodus, and to have con-
tained all the journeyings of the Israelites, with the historical
circumstances that led to them or attended them, and that
it ended with the recapitulation of them that is offered us
in this chapter : in the 24th chapter of Exodus it may
seem to be intimated that Moses wrote another book, called
the book of the covenant r . Let us now suppose that
Moses at first wrote in this book no more than what God
had commanded, and the people solemnly engaged them-
selves to perform, at their entering into covenant with God ;
namely, what is offered us in the 19th, 2Oth, 22d, and 24th
chapters of Exodus ; it may still be reasonably concluded,
the covenant being not limited to the observance of the few
commandments contained in these chapters, but obliging
the Israelites to obey God's voice, to observe and to do all
the statutes and judgments which God should give them 8 ,
that the commandments afterwards given unto Moses were
also written in this book in the following order ; first, The
laws given in Mount Sinai, towards the end of which might
be thus written, These are the statutes and judgments , which
the Lord made between him and the children of Israel in Mount
Sinai by the hand of Moses* : after which words, we may
possibly imagine he added the laws contained in the 27th
chapter of Leviticus, and concluded with these words,
These are the commandments which the Lord commanded Moses
for the children of Israel in mount Sinai*. Next to these might
be added the laws which God gave out of the tabernacle
of the congregation x : and in this manner we may imagine
the book of the covenant to have consisted of all the laws
which God gave the Israelites both from Sinai and from

r Exodus xxiv. 4 7. u Levit. xxvii. 34.

s See Exodus xxxiv. 27. x Levit. i. i. Numbers i. i.

t Levit. xxvi. 46.

18 PREFACE.

the tabernacle of the congregation. In the 29th chapter
of Deuteronomy we are told of a covenant which the Lord
commanded Moses to make with the children of Israel in the
land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made with, them
in Horeb? : and we find these words at the end of one of
his chapters : These are the commandments and the judgments
which the Lord commanded by the hand of Moses unto the
children of Israel, in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Je-
richo 2 . It will not be doubted but that Moses wrote all
the words of this law also in a book*. Let us suppose that the
words above cited were the conclusion of it : let us suppose
farther, that unto all these Moses added in another book
the words which he spake unto all Israel on this side Jordan in
the wilderness*; and all these together, with the Book of
Genesis, make the Pentateuch, or five Books, which we call
the Books of Moses.

It will here be said, that if we look for the books of
Moses in the Pentateuch in this manner, we must allow
some paragraphs and even chapters not to follow now ex-
actly in the places where Moses at first put them. But in
answer to this, I apprehend that it will not be thought a
very material question, whether any of the leaves, sheets,
rolls, or skins, that were written by Moses, have or have not,
by some accident, been discomposed, and are not perhaps
put together again, every one in its proper place : but the
point is, whether in the present Pentateuch we have all, and
nothing but all, that Moses wrote in the books that were
penned by him: and of this a serious examinant may suf-
ficiently satisfy himself. If we must suppose that Moses
wrote his books under such titles as I have mentioned, yet
under these the whole of all the books of Moses may be
collected, and perhaps some passages and sections, which now
seem to be misplaced, may be hereby put into an order, that

7 Deut. xxix. i. on a different side the river from the

z Numb, xxxvi. 13. place where the book was written. But,

a Deut. xxxi. 24. were there no other, the loth and i3th

b Deut. i. i . I might here answer verses of the goth chapter of Genesis are

a trifling cavil offered concerning the sufficient to shew the word beneber to

Book of Deuteronomy, raised from the have the signification we here take it

words here cited. It is pretended that in. When Joseph went up out of

beneber ha Jar den, which we translate on Egypt to bury his father, they jour-

this side Jordan, do rather signify beyond, neyed from Goshen into Canaan, and

or on the other side Jordan, and conse- came to the cave of Machpelah before

quently that these words imply Moses Mamre, in their way to which they

not to have wrote the Book of Deutero- stopped at the threshingfloor of Atad,

nomy, for that the book so called was beneber ha Jarden, not beyond, but on

wrote by a person who had passed this side Jordan; for they did not travel

over Jordan, and could, according to into Canaan, so far as to the river

the intimation of these words, remark, Jordan,
that the words of Moses were spoke

PREFACE. 19

may add a clearness and connection, which they may be
suspected to want in their present situation : and if we
collect and examine the several little notes, remarks, and
observations, which, though now found in several places of
the Pentateuch , were undoubtedly not written by Moses,
but added by some later hand, a judicious examiner will see
of these, i, That they are not so many as they are hastily
thought to be. 2. That they are all of them inconsiderable ;
none of them so necessary in the places they are found in,
but that, if they were omitted, the text would be full, clear,
and connected without them. In this manner we may make
the utmost allowance to the several objections offered against
the books of Moses, and have a clear conviction, that there
is no weight in any of them. That the Pentateuch contains
the books of Moses, has been constantly believed and testi-
fied by the Jews in all ages : Spinoza himself confesses that
Aben Ezra only, a very modern writer, pretended to have
doubts of it, and that his intimations are but dark and ob-
scure. Josephus tells us, as a truth never questioned, that
five of their sacred books were the books of Moses d : and
our Saviour explains to us in what sense they were Moses's
books ; they were, he tells us, Moses's writings : Had ye be-
lieved Moses, said he, ye would have believed me ; for he wrote
of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe
my words ? If it were possible to shew that the books we
now read of Moses's were not the books alluded to by our
Saviour, something might be offered upon this subject : but
whoever will attempt this, will find himself not able to pro-
pose any thing that can want a refutation.

When Moses had made an end of writing what he was
to leave the Israelites, he commanded the Levites, saying, Take
this book of the law, and put it in the side of the ark f of the
covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be therefor a wit-
ness against thees. It is here queried, what the book was
which Moses here gave the Levites ; whether all his written
works in one code or volume, or whether it was the words
ofthislaw^; some one single book, which he had just then
finished, a part only of his writings, Spinoza is for this
latter opinion, this best suiting his purpose, to insinuate that
the Levites had charge only of a small part of what Moses
wrote, and consequently that all, except what was com-
mitted to their keeping, was soon lost'. But I should think,

c Vid. Clerici Dissertat. de Scriptore b. iii. Account of the ark.
Pentateuch. g Deut. xxxi. 25, 26.

d Joseph, contra Apion. lib. i. c. 8. h g ee ver . 24.

e John v. 46, 47. i In Tract. Theolog. Polit. ubi sup.

f See Pridoaux, Connection part i.
VOL. II. C

20 PREFACE.

1. that the words Dibrei hattorah hazzaoth. do not perhaps
signify the words of this law k , limited to a single book of
part of Moses's writings : the particle JlNt zaoth is, I think,
sometimes used as plural 1 , and the expression above is pro-
bably of this import ; when Moses had made an end of writing
the words of the law, even all these [words or things]. The
fact might be thus : Moses wrote his books thus far, to this
place; and then gave the Levites the charge of them.

2. The words used by Moses to the Levites are general : he
delivered to them not the look of this law ; not any par-
ticular part of his writings, but this book of the law in ge-
neral: the particle this was here used, because Moses had
the book then in his hand, which he delivered to them.
Seper ha Torah n , or seper Torah , was the name of the whole
code or volume of the sacred writings, never once given
by Moses to any single part of his works, but imposed here
as a general title of the book that contained the whole of
them. The law was that part of the code for an introduc-
tion to, illustration, history, or confirmation of which, all
the other parts were written, and therefore the whole might
well be called the book of the law, the law being the prin-
cipal and most important part of the code called by this
title. As Moses gave the sacred volume which he left to
the Israelites this general title ; so we find it used in all
after-ages for the title of this book, even when not only
the works of Moses, but also the Psalms and the Prophets
were contained in it. Joshua wrote his book in the book
of the law p ; and yet in Josiah's time the volume found in
the temple, which undoubtedly contained all that Joshua
had written in it, as well as Moses, was called by its general
name, The book of the law only. In our Saviour's time
the books of Scripture were of three sorts, as Josephus af-
terwards reckoned them 9; namely, the books of Moses, the
Prophets, and the Psalms'": and our Saviour, who thus
distinguishes them, when he intended to speak of the par-
ticulars that made up the sacred code, yet in the general
not only calls all the books of Moses, the law s , but cites
the book of Psalms as part of the law 1 , as the Jews also
did in his age u , and St. Paul afterwards cited Isaiah in like
manner x . Moses, at delivering his writings, called the whole

k Deut. xxxi. 24. q Joseph, contra Apion. lib. i. c. 8.

1 See Judges xiii. 23. r Luke xxiv. 44.

m mrr minrr IBD n s ibid.

n 2 Kings xxii. 8. t j on n xv . 25.

Josh. xxiv. 26. 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14. John xii. 34.

P Joshua xxiv. 26. x j Cor. xiv. 21.

. PREFACE. 21

tome, The look of the law, and this continued to be the
general title of the whole volume of the sacred books in all
ages, whatever particular books were annexed to or con-
tained in it. As to the book of the wars of the Lord, we
have no reason to think any such book was written by
Moses: it is indeed cited in a book of Moses 7; but so is
the book of Jasher in that of Joshua 2 , and yet the book of
Jasher was a composure more modern and of far less au-
thority than the book of Joshua. The reader may see what
is offered concerning the citation of the book of Jasher in
Joshua a , and will find it reasonable perhaps to account for
the citation in Numbers of the book of the wars of the Lord
in like manner. In what is above offered the reader will see
the greatest liberty taken by me in the suppositions I have
made concerning the original divisions or titles of the books
of Moses, and the dislocations or transpositions that may be
conceived now to be in some chapters or paragraphs of them.
I was willing to allow, for the sake of argument, the utmost
that could with any show of reason be pretended ; being
sure that, after all, nothing could be concluded to prove
Moses not to have written what we ascribe to him. But I
must not leave this topic without observing, that I cannot
say that Moses did actually divide his writings into books
in the manner above supposed, or that the chapters, which
we may imagine not to be now found in their proper places,
were originally otherwise disposed by Moses than we now
find them. Of all the books written by Moses, the book
of Genesis only could be composed by him in the oppor-
tunity of a great leisure 11 : he must have lived in the hurry
of a variety of engagements, in the management of a most
restless people, all the time he was writing his accounts of
them ; and consequently, what is contained in what we now
call the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deu-
teronomy, might be at first minuted down, and put to-
t ether, as works generally are, which are composed and
nished in such circumstances : the historical parts were
registered as the occurrences arose that were the matter of
them. The laws given were recorded when, and as it
pleased God to direct Moses to write them ; sometimes im-
mediately at their being given, at other times not until
occasions arose, that demanded a recollection of them. Some
things were repeated, added to, or explained, as circum-
stances required, and Moses had no time to go over and
methodize anew what he had wrote in this manner, but put

y Numbers xxi. 14. z Joshua x. 13. a See b. xii. ad fin. b See vol. ii. b. ix.

22 PREFACE. .

the whole together, and gave it to the Levites, still adding
a few matters that were to be recorded after his ordering
the Levites the charge of his books ; namely, what we
find from the 24th verse of the 3ist chapter of Deutero-
nomy, to the end of the 33d chapter, as Joshua after-
wards added to what was left by Moses the occurrences of
the times that succeeded. In this manner, perhaps, we may
fully account for all that can seem in any wise to intimate
to us, that we have not now the books of Moses in the
order and form in which he left them ; and this account
of his books seems to me most likely to be the true one,
and consequently most reasonable to be admitted.

As to the particulars contained in the ensuing volume,
I must submit them to the reader : I hope they may be re-
ceived with the candour that has been shewed to my former
volumes. What is now published might have been more
various and entertaining, had it reached down to an age
that could have afforded more matter of profane history to
be interspersed in it: but divers of the Scripture occur-
rences herein treated of were not to be passed over cursorily,
and the entering into these more largely obliged me to con-
clude this volume something short of the period at which I
proposed to myself to end it. I am abundantly sensible of
the obligations I am under to many of my superiors, for the
reputation they give me by their favour. The truly great
find a real pleasure in cherishing any well-intended endea-
vours of their inferiors : and if my abilities as an author
were equal to the gratitude and inclination of my mind,
I should well deserve the continuance of that good opinion
which many persons, who are in stations above my being
otherwise known to them, are pleased to conceive of me
themselves, and to create of me in others. But I am afraid
I should appear guilty of an act of vanity rather than of
gratitude, if I were to proceed in intimations of this nature,
or to say how much the right honourable Mr. Onslow, the
Speaker of the House of Commons, has been a patron of
my studies in this manner.

My thanks' are acknowledged to be due to a learned di-
vine of a foreign University, Mr. Wolle, of Leipsic, and
also to Mr. Arnold, professor of the English and French
tongues there, for my reputation in their country. I am
sorry I am not able to read the translation of my books,
which the one of them has some years ago published in the
German tongue, and the very learned dissertation prefixed
to that translation by the other. Hopes were at one time
given me of seeing this dissertation in English, and, from the

PREFACE. 23

short extract of it in our Republic of Letters , I cannot but
think I should have satisfaction in every part of it, except
in that which relates to my own character. I have not those
abilities, which this learned divine ascribes to me : I may
have been happy in the choice of a subject, which, if I could
manage suitably, might afford a work very useful even to
the learned world. I can only endeavour to go through it
with as much attention as my situation in life will allow
me ; but am able to perform no part of it without many
imperfections. My procedure in it must be by slow steps ;
being obliged many times to lay aside my studies upon ac-
count of avocations, which, in my circumstances, must be
attended to, and oftentimes to defer, or entirely to drop
subjects that might be considered, as I can or cannot get
a sight of books that would conduct my inquiries. How-
ever, if I find my endeavours continue acceptable to the
public, I shall, as soon as I can, in one volume more, offer
the remaining part of this undertaking.

c Republic of Letters for September, 1731.

SHELTON, NORFOLK,
Oct. 31

THE

SACRED AND PROFANE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD

CONNECTED,

BOOK X.

MOSES and the Israelites joined in a song of thanksgiving
for their deliverance from the Egyptians % after which
they moved from the Red sea into the wilderness of Shur b :
they wandered three days in the wilderness, and could find
no water : at Marah they found water, but could not
drink it, for it was bitter d ; And the people murmured against
Moses, saying. What shall we drink f And he cried unto the
Lord, and the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had cast
into the waters, the waters were made sweet 6 . We are in-
formed f that God at this time gave Moses some particular
command, and proved him, or made trial of his obedience ;
for this must be the sense of the place. Our English trans-
lators have evidently mistaken the words of Moses; they
render the passage, there he made for THEM a statute, and an

a Exodus xv. Antiq. 1. iii. c. i.

b Ver. 22. d Exodus xv. 23 1

c Syncell. Chron. p. 128. ed. Par. e Ver. 25.

1651. Philo de vita Mosis, 1. i. Joseph. f Ver. 26,

26 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X

ordinance, and there he proved THEM. This translation seems
to hint, that some laws were here given to the Israelites,
and that they were the persons here proved; but the com-
mentators are at a loss to ascertain any laws given at this
times. If W e attend to the Hebrew text, the affix used by
Moses does not signify THEM, but HTM ; and Moses himself
was the person here applied to, and not the Israelites, and
the statute and ordinance here given was to him, and not to
them ; and this agrees with the 26th verse, where the text is
justly translated, not, If ye will hearken; but, If THOU wilt
diligently hearken, &c. When the Israelites were got over
the Red sea, we do not read that the pillar of the cloud
and of fire went before them into the wilderness of Shur :
Moses very probably led them thither without any special
direction from God. They travelled here three days with-
out water ; and when they found water, it was bitter, and
they could not drink it. In their distress they murmured,
and Moses prayed to God for assistance. God accepted his
prayer, and gave him \chok ve mishpat] a special order and
appointment what to do ; namely, to take a bough from a
tree which he was directed to, and to put it into the waters,
and by this he proved or tried him h : he gave him an op-
portunity to shew his readiness strictly to perform what-
ever orders should be enjoined him ; and hereupon God
promised him, that if he would thus punctually observe all
his appointments, that then he would continually extricate
him out of every difficulty.

We read of no place called Marah in the profane au-
thors ; for indeed the Israelites gave the place this name,
because the waters they found here were bitter, the word
Marah in their language signifying to be bitter: but the best
heathen writers agree, that there were lakes of bitter waters

g See Pool's Synops. in loc. manner : They were ordered to gather

h We meet many instances in the of the manna a certain rate every day,

Scriptures of God's appointing persons that God might prove them, whether

applying to him for favours, to do they would walk in his law or no. Thus

some act as a proof of their entire was Moses here proved ; he was or-

submission and obedience to him. Ja- dered to put a bough into the water;

cob was ordered to use peeled rods, a thing in itself insignificant ; but his

Gen. xxx. Naaman to wash in the river doing it testified his readiness to ob-

Jordan, 2 Kings v. And in Exodus serve any injunction which God should

xvi. the Israelites were proved in this think fit to give him.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 27

in the parts where the Israelites were now travelling. Di-
odorus informs us, that there were such waters at some
little distance from the city Arsinoe 1 ; Strabo says the same
thing k ; and Pliny carries on Trajan's river from the Nile
to the bitter fountains 1 ; and these bitter fountains, and the
bitter lakes mentioned by Strabo and Diodorus, and the
bitter waters which the Israelites found at Marah, may easily
be conceived to be the same. The city Arsinoe, agreeably to
both Strabo's and m Diodorus's position of it, was situate near
the place of the present Suez ; and not far from the neigh-
bourhood of this place reached Trajan's river, which was
carried on to the bitter lakes ; and hither the Israelites may
be conceived to have wandered. They went from the Red
sea into the wilderness of Shur ; they could not pass through
towards Canaan for want of water; they turned about to-
wards Egypt, where they hoped to find a plenty, and came
to Marah upon the coast of Suez.

Josephus gives a very idle account of the change of the
taste of the waters of Marah n . He supposes that the
country they were now in afforded no water naturally : that
the Israelites sunk wells, but could not find springs to sup-
ply enough for their occasions ; and that what they did
find was so bitter that they could not drink it : that they
sent out every way to search, but could hear of no water :
that there was indeed a well at Marah, which afforded some
water, but not a quantity sufficient for them, and that what
it supplied them with was so bitter that even their cattle
could not drink it : that upon the Israelites' uneasiness with
Moses, he prayed to God, and took his rod and split it
down in the middle, and persuaded the people that God had
heard his prayers, and would make the water fit for them
to drink, if they would do as he should order them. Upon
their asking what he would have them do, he directed them
to draw out of the well, and pour away the greatest part of
the water; the doing this, he says, stirring and dashing

1 Diodor. Sic. 1. iii. c. 39. 1 Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. vi. c. 29.

k Strabo, Geog. 1. xvii. p. 804. ed. m Diodor. et Strabo ubi sup.

Par. 1620. n Josephus Antiq. 1. iii. c. i.

28 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

about the waters by the buckets they drew with, purged,
and by degrees made them potable. But, i. This account
of Josephus differs from what the profane writers, as well
as Moses, relate of the country where the Israelites now
were. Josephus represents it as a place where no water was
to be had ; but according to Moses, the people were in
extremity at Marah, not for want of water, but of good
water ; and to this Strabo agrees ; he supposes water enough
in this place, many large lakes and fosses , though he tells
us they were in ancient days bitter, until, by a communi-
cation P of the river, the later inhabitants of the country
found out a way to meliorate the taste of them. 2. Had the
Israelites found a well, as Josephus supposes, if the sup-
ply of water it afforded was too scanty for their occasions,
what relief would it have been to them to draw off and
throw away the greatest part of their defective supply, in
order to sweeten a small remainder ? Or, 3. How could
the dashing water about at the bottom of a well sufficiently
purify it from its mineral taste, which most probably was
given it from the very earth against which they must thus
dash it? But it must be needless to refute at large this
fancy of Josephus.

The writer of the book of Ecclesiasticus hints a different
reason for the cure of those bitter waters. He suggests, that
the wood which Moses was directed to use had naturally
a medicinal virtue to correct the taste of the waters at
Marah : Was not, says he, the water made sweet with wood,
that the virtue thereof might be known^f But I cannot
think that the opinion of this writer can be admitted : for,
i. It does not seem probable that Moses here used a whole
and large tree ; rather he took a little bough, such as he
himself could put into the water, and immediately the
taste of the waters changed. 2. If it could be thought
that Moses employed the people to take down a very large

Auapvyes irXeiovs Kal \i/j.vai TrArj- irp6repov fjLfV ^ffav iriKpal, TfJUjOelffiis Se

<Tidov<rai avrais. Strabo, 1. xvii. p. 804. TT/S Siupvyos /j.T&d\\ovTo rfj Kpdffei TOV

ed. Par. 1620. TTOTO^OU. Id. ibid.

P Tiov -xiKpuv Ka\ovfj.V(DV Xi^vSov, at <1 Ecclus. xxxviii. 5.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 29

tree, and convey it into the water, can we suppose that
even the largest tree, steeped in a lake, should imme-
diately communicate a sufficient quantity of its natural
sweetness, to correct the taste of water, enough for the oc-
casions of so many hundred thousands of people? But, 3. We
have great reason to think that there was no tree in these
parts of this virtue. Had there been such an one, after
the virtue of it was thus known, especially Moses having
recorded this his use of it, it would certainly have been
much used by others, and as much inquired after by the
naturalists : but though Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and
Pliny, have all remarked, that there were bitter waters in
these parts of the world, yet they knew of no trees of a
medicinal quality to correct the taste of them. Pliny tells
us of a method afterwards invented to meliorate the
taste of such waters 1 ": but though he has treated largely
of the powers and virtues of trees and plants 8 , and of the
trees in these parts of the world particularly 1 ; yet he never
heard of any of this sort, and therefore undoubtedly there
were not any. The author of Ecclesiasticus was a very
learned man, and had much given himself to the reading
the writings of his fathers, and had carefully collected their
sentiments, and added some observations of his own to
them u ; and this seems to have been his own : had it been a
received opinion of the Jewish writers, I should think Jo-
sephus would have had it ; or had there really been a tree of
this nature, the heathen naturalists would have observed it;
but from their entire silence, I imagine that the author of
Ecclesiasticus, speculating, in the chapter where we find this
hint/ upon the medicines which God hath created out of
the earth x , offered this hint purely from his own fancy,
without any authority for it. The book of Ecclesiasticus is
but a modern composure in comparison of Moses's writings ;
it was first published in Egypt about one hundred and thirty-
two years before Christy, and, being published in Egypt,

r Nitrosse aut amarae aquae polenta t Tbid. c. 12.
addita mitigantur, ut intra duas horas u Prologue to Ecclus.
bibi possint. Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. xxiv. x Ecclus. xxxviii. 4.
c. i. y Prideaux, Connect, p. ii. b. i. vol.

B Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. xxiv. per tot. lib. iii. . 7.

30 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

was much read by the Jews of Alexandria ; and accordingly
Philo, who lived there about our Saviour's time, was ac-
quainted with the opinion of this author; but he very justly
doubts the truth of it, and queries whether the wood here
used had naturally, or whether God was not pleased to
give it its virtue for this particular occasion 2 .

From Marah the Israelites removed to a place where they
found twelve fountains of water and threescore and ten
palm trees. A place not unlike this is described by Strabo a ;
the Israelites called it Elim. From hence, after some days
rest, they marched first to the Red sea b , perhaps to the very
place where they came over out of Egypt, and from thence
they went into the wilderness of Sin, on the fifteenth day of
the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt* ;
i. e. exactly a month after their leaving Egypt ; for they
left Egypt soon after midnight of the fourteenth day of the
first month d . The wilderness of Sin was a barren desert,
not capable of supplying them with provision, which as soon
as they felt the want of, they were ready to mutiny, and
most passionately wished themselves in Egypt again 6 . But
God was here pleased miraculously to relieve them by great
flights of quails, a sort of birds very common upon the
coasts of the Arabian or Red sea f ; and, besides sending these,
he rained them bread from heaven. Every morning, when
the dew was off, there lay a small round thing, as small as
the hoar frost upon the ground^ ; it was like coriander seed,
of a white colour, and the taste of it was like wafers made
with honey h . The Israelites, when they saw it, knew not

Philo de vita Mosis, 1. i. manna, some of them perhaps deduced

QoiviitSav a elvai $vvopov, rifj.aff$ai re from some expressions in the Book of

Sr), 5t& rb iraffav r^v KVK\CJ> Kavnart]- Wisdom. That Apocryphal author

pdv re, KOI fovfyov, Kal &&KIOV virdpxfiv. says of the manna, that it was able to

Strabo, Geog. 1. xvi. p. 776. ed. Par. content every man's delight, agreeing to

1620. every taste, and that, serving to the ap-

b Numbers xxxiii. 10. petite of the eater, it tempered itself to

c Exodus xvi. i . every man's liking. Wisdom xvi. 20,

a Exodus xii. 21. Lyra, from the Rabbins, repre-

E Exodus xvi. 3. sents, that it had the taste of any sort

f Joseph. Antiq. 1. iii. c. i. . 5. of fish or fowl, according to the wish of

Athenseus Deipnos. 1. ix. c. ii. him that eat it; but then with St.

Exodus xvi. 13, 14. Augustin he restrains the privilege of

h The Hebrew writers have had finding in the manna the taste of what

various conceits about the taste of they most loved, to the righteous only.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 31

what it was, and therefore asked one another NIH |Q man
hua, for they are two Hebrew words, and signify what is
this? man signifies what, and hua this; and not knowing
what name to give it, they called it man, or ivhat, i, e. is it,
ever after 1 .

The Israelites were ordered, every head of a family, to
gather as many omers k of this manna every morning as he
had persons in his family 1 ; but as they went out to gather
without taking measures with them, it so happened that
some gathered more than their quantity, and some less ; but
they corrected this before they carried their gatherings
home ; for they measured what they had gathered with an
omer, and he that had gathered more than his quantity
gave to him that had gathered less, so that every one had
his just quantity made up, and no more. The words of the
1 8th verse, as our English version renders them, seem to
imply, that God was here pleased miraculously to adjust
the several quantities that were gathered. We translate the
place, The children of Israel gathered some more, some less :
and when they did mete it with an omer, he that gathered
much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack;
which words may be thought to hint, that God was pleased
miraculously so to order it, that when they came to mea-
sure, the store of him that had gathered too much was di-
minished to the exact number of omers which he was to

The authors of Talmud Joma and Lib. high taste, Numbers xi. 6. and we

Zohar say, the manna had all sorts of have not any hint from Moses of its

tastes, except the tastes of the plants being so variously delightsome to the

and sallads which grew in Egypt. But palate, as the author of the Book of

there is no end of pursuing or refuting Wisdom seems to suggest,
the fancies of these writers. Moses * Our English word manna, Exod.

says of the manna here in Exodus, xvi. 15. seems to intimate, that the

that its taste was like wafers made with Israelites put the two words man hua

honey. In Numbers xi. 8. he says, the together, as the name of this food :

cakes made of it had the taste of fresh but they used but one of them; for

oil; so that we may conjecture, that it they called it man, and not manhua.

had a sweetness when gathered, which See Exod. xvi. 15, 31, 35. Numb. xi.

evaporated in the grinding, beating, and 6, 7, 9. Deut. viii. 3, 16. Joshua v.

baking. It tasted like honey when taken 12. Nehem. ix. 20. Psalm Ixxviii.

off the ground, but the cakes made of it 24, &c.

were as cakes of bread kneaded with oil. k An omer is the tenth part of an

The Israelites used it as a sort of bread; ephah, probably about three pints and

they had the quails instead of flesh, a half of our measure.
Exodus xvi. 12. Numbers xi. The 1 Exod. xvi. 16.
manna is represented to have had no

32 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

have, and the defective quantity of him that had not ga-
thered his due quantity was miraculously increased to the
just measure of what he was to have gathered ; so that he that
had gathered much had nothing over, and he that had gathered
little had no lack, the divine Providence causing the quantity
which every one had gathered to answer exactly to the
appointed measure. Josephus, I think, took this to be the
fact m . But, i. to what purpose could it be for God to com-
mand the people to gather an omer for each person, if he
designed miraculously so to order it, that, let them gather
what they would, they should find their gatherings amount
to an exact omer, neither more nor less ? 2. The words of
Moses, if rightly translated, express the fact to have been
very different from this representation of it. The word
which we translate had nothing over, should be rendered",
he made to have nothing over ; and in like manner the word
translated had no lack, should be rendered, he caused to have
no lack ; and Moses was the person who thus ordered it : and
the i yth, 1 8th, and I9th verses should be word for word
thus translated :

Ver. 17. And the children of Israel did so, and gathered some
more, some less.

Ver. 1 8. And they measured with an omer, and Moses
caused him that had more not to abound, and him that had less
not to fall short, \for they gathered each one according to p his
eating .]

Ver. 19. And said, Let no man leave of it till the morning.

So that the fact here was, that Moses directed them to
give to one another, they that had more than their measure
to make up what was wanting to them that had less, that

m Joseph. Antiq. lib. iii. c. i. . 6. after the last, a construction very com-

n This is the true sense of the He- mon in the ancient languages.
brew verbs in the conjugation they are P The words, they gathered each one

here used in. f\T$ in the conjugation according to his eating, are a remark by

Kal signifies, to abound, or to have over; way of parenthesis, to give a reason for

but tpsn in Hiphil is to cause to what Moses directed. He caused them

abound. Thus ion in Kal signifies, that had over much, to give to them

to fall short, or to want; but "porm that had less than they were to have,

in Hiphil is to diminish, or to cause to because they gathered, as we say, from

want. See Isaiah xxxii. 6. hand to mouth, and it would have

o In the Hebrew text, Moses, the been of no service to have laid up

nominative case to three verbs, is put what they had to spare.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 33

all might have their full quantity, and no more. 3. St.
Paul very plainly intimates this to have been the fact, by
alluding to what the Israelites here did with their manna,
in order to induce the Corinthians to contribute a relief to
the poorer Christians, such as the Corinthians could at that
time well spare out of their abundance. / mean not, says
he, that other men be eased, and you burthened: but by an
equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply
for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for
your want: that there may be an equality : as it is written. He
that had gathered much had nothing over; and lie that had
gathered little had no lack^.

Another order given the Israelites about the manna was,
that they were every day to eat what they had gathered,
and to leave none all night for the next day's provisions
Some of the people were not strictly careful in this point,
but left some of their manna until the morning, and it
bred worms, and stank*. Every sixth day they were to
gather twice as much as on any other days, because the
seventh day was the sabbath ; and on that day they were to
gather no manna, nor do any sort of work* : and accordingly
on the seventh day there fell no manna ; for there went
out some of the people to gather, but they found none u ;
and what remained of the double quantity which the people
gathered on the sixth day, and reserved for the seventh,
did not stink, neither was there any worm therein ; though
if any part of any other day's gathering was not eaten on
the day it was gathered in, it would not keep, nor be fit
to be eaten on the day following x . Thus miraculously did
God feed the people in the wilderness for about forty years ;
for they had this supply of manna until they came unto
the borders of the land of Canaan y. Aaron, directed by
Moses, in obedience to God's express command, put an
omer of manna into a pot, in order to keep it in memory
of the wonderful supply of food which God had thus given
them.

I 2 Corinth, viii. 13,14,15. u Ver. 27.

r Exodus xvi. 19. x Ver. 24.

Ver. 20. y Exodus xvi. 35. Joshua v. 12.

V>T o 'J

t Ver. 23

34 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [l3OOK X.

From the wilderness of Sin, Moses led the Israelites to
Repaidim, making two short halts by the way, which are
not mentioned here in Exodus ; one of them was at Doph-
kah, the other at Alush 2 . From their encampment in the
wilderness of Sin to Rephidim might be, I imagine, about
twenty miles. At Rephidim they were distressed for want
of water, and murmured against Moses for bringing them
into extremity. Moses cried unto the Lord, and received
directions to smite a rock at mount Horeb with the rod,
which he had used in performing the wonders wrought in
Egypt ; and upon his doing this in the sight of the elders of
Israel, God was pleased to cause a river of water miracu-
lously to flow out of the rock, to supply their necessities*.

The most learned archbishop Usher remarks, that the
rock out of which Moses thus miraculously produced the
water, followed the Israelites throughout the wilderness b .
Tertullian is said to have been of this opinion . The
Jewish Rabbins were fond of it. The most learned primate
says expressly, that the rock which Moses smote followed
them : but some other writers soften the prodigy, and as-
sert, that the water from the rock became a river, and
was made to flow after the camp, wherever the Israelites
journeyed, until they came to Kadesh. The reasons given
for this opinion are, I. It is remarked, that from the time
of this flow of waters from the rock at Horeb, until they
came to Kadesh, the Israelites are not said to have ever
wanted water d ; and it is argued, that they must continually
have wanted it in their passage throughout the wilderness,
if God had not thus miraculously supplied them. 3. Some
passages in the Psalms are thought to imply, that a river
from the rock attended them in their journeyings. 3. It'
is hinted, that a text in Deuteronomy confirms this opinion.

z I may here hint once for all, that Israelites, upon account of their eri-

these and the other names we have camping at them.

of the several places where the Israel- a Exodus xvii. 5, 6.

ites made their encampments in the b Usher's Annals,

wilderness, are generally names given c Hsec est aqua, quse de comite Petra

by them to the places they stopped at; populo defluebat. Tertullian. de Bap-

and that the places were not called by tismo.

any particular names, except by the d Numbers xx.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 35

And lastly, it is pretended, that St. Paul says expressly, that
the rock followed them.

I. " It is said that the Israelites never wanted water after
" this supply from the rock at Horeb, until they came to
" Kadesh ; though the wilderness they travelled through
" was so dry a place, that they could not have found water
" in it without some continual miracle." To this I answer.
i. We are nowhere told in Scripture, that God wrought
this particular miracle upon the rock, in order to continue
a supply of water for the Israelites, during the whole time
of their journeying in the wilderness ; and if a miracle was
really necessary, why this rather than some other? The
Israelites knew how to dig wells when they wanted water,
and it is probable that they digged many in their passage
through the wilderness, as we read they digged one at
Beer 6 ; and it is more reasonable to imagine that God might
frequently give them water ^ by causing them, when they
digged for it, to find water-springs in a dry grounds, than to
suppose that a mountainous rock moved after them in
their journeyings, or that any streams from it became a
river, and was made to form itself a channel to flow to them
in all their movements. But, 2. Though the wilderness was
indeed a dry place, and may in general terms be called
a dry and thirsty land, where no water is h ; though the
Israelites complained of it as such', and the heathen writers
give it this character k ; yet we must not take their ex-
pressions so strictly, as to imagine that no water was to be
found in any parts of it. Strabo speaks of fosses of water in
the driest of these deserts 1 ; and from Diodorus we may
collect, that in the most unpromising parts of this country
there were proper places to sink wells in, which would
afford abundance of water m . The Israelites might be re-
duced to difficulties in many places, but unquestionably in

e Numbers xxi. 16. * Afa/tyios7?}/cal \wirpa (poti'iKasexovo'a

f See ver. 18. 6\tyovs al fyvtcra tfSara. Strab. Geog.

g Psalm cvii. 35. 1. xvi.

h Psalm Ixiii. i. m Kara yap T^V &vv$pov xdpzv Afyo-

i Numbers xxi. 5. ^vr\v KaraffKevd^ovr^s f&Katpa (ppeava

k ''EprjfjLos Kal &vv8p6s ecrrt. Diodor. ^pool/rat Scuf/tAetn ir6roi3. Diod. 1. ii.
Sic. 1. ii. c. 54. vid. Strab. Geog. 1. xvi. c. 48.

VOL. II. D

36 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

others they found receptacles of water of divers sorts" ; so
that the true reason why we read of no miraculous supply
of water, from the time of their leaving Horeb until they
came to Kadesh, may be their not necessarily wanting such
a supply in that interval. But,

II. It is represented, that from Psalms Ixxviii. 16 20.
cv. 41. it may be justly inferred, that rivers of water flowed
from the rock after the Israelites in their several marches.
I answer : The expressions cited from the Psalmist prove
only that the rock smote by Moses poured forth a large
quantity of water. God brought streams out of the rock, and
caused waters to run down like rivers. He opened the rock,
and the waters gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a
river. Philo the Jew relates, that, upon Moses striking
the rock, the water poured out like a torrent, affording
them not only a sufficient quantity for the allaying their
present thirst, but to fill their water-vessels, in order to carry
away water with them, when they marched forwards . A
very considerable supply must be wanted by so large a mul-
titude, and the words of the Psalmist do well describe such
a supply ; but they do in no wise intimate, that rivers from
the rock followed them, when they left the place where the
supply was given them. But,

III. Moses, Deut. ix. 21. mentions a river, or brook,
which descended out of the mount, and flowed near the
camp, after the Israelites were departed from Rephidim, and
were encamped at mount Sinai P. Now if this brook was
a river which flowed from mount Horeb, it could be none
other than that which was caused by Moses striking the
rock ; for before that miracle there was no water ; and if it
came from hence, it seems evident that the stream of this
water flowed near the camp, after they had left Rephidim,
the place where the supply was first given. But a few
observations will set this fact in a clear light. And, i. I think

n Uo\\axov (TvcrrdSes rS>v 6/j.&piwv VSpeia irdvra fir\-f)pwffav, us Kal irp6rfpov

voaT<av.^ ^ air ^ r v -jr-riySjv, at irticpal fj.ev -ffffav (pvcrei,

IlalCi Wrpoy, f) Sc Kpovv^v tKXf?- /uercjSaAoi/To Se eiritypoffvvri eda irpbs rb

rai, ws pfe r6re fj.6vov irapcurxw &KOS y\vKiov. Philo de vit. Mosis, 1. i.
5tyouj,aAAa Kal irpbs irAetw Xf^ov TOO-- P Exodus xix. 2.

a^rais fj.vpi6.ffiv a.<$>Qoviav ir6rov' r& yap

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 37

it evident that no supply of water was given to the Israelites
from any rock at Rephidim. The direction to Moses, when
he cried unto the Lord, was, to take the elders of Israel
with him, and to go from Rephidim, the place where the
Israelites were encamped, unto Horeb, and there to smite a
rock, in order to obtain water q ; so that the supply of water
was not obtained at Rephidim, where the Israelites were
encamped, but at a place some distance from Rephidim,
whither not the people, but the elders of Israel, accompanied
Moses, and where what he did was done, not in the sight of
the congregation, but in the sight of the elders of Israel 1 ".
2. Horeb and Sinai were near and contiguous to one another,
being only different cliffs of one and the same mountain.
This appears evident from several passages in the books of
Moses. When God delivered the commandments in an
audible voice from mount Sinai 8 , he is said to speak unto
them in Horeb * : and when the people stood before the
Lord their God under the mountain, and the mountain
burned with fire u , which mountain was unquestionably mount
Sinai x , they stood before the Lord at Hereby; and in the
day of their assembly, when they desired not to hear the
voice of the Lord any more 2 , which petition was made
when they were assembled at mount Sinai a , they are said to
be at Horeb b : so that from these and many other passages
that might be cited, it appears, either according to St.
Jerome, that Horeb and Sinai were but two names for one
and the same mount c , or rather they were two mountains
so contiguous, that whilst the people lay encamped at the
foot of them, they might be said to be at either. And
therefore, 3. The water which Moses obtained from the
rock at Horeb might supply the camp all the time the
Israelites were at Sinai, without the rock's moving from
its place ; for they were encamped very near the rock from
whence the supply of water was given all the time they

Q Exodus xvii. 5, 6. z Deut. xviii. 16.

r Ibid. a Exod. xx. 19.

s Ibid. xx. b Deut. xviii. 16.

t Deut. i. 19. c Mihi autem videtur, quod duplici

u Deut. iv. 10, ii. nomine idem mons, nunc Sina, nunc

x Exodus xix. 18. Choreb vocetur. Hieron. de locis Heb.

y Deut. iv. 10.

38 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

were at Sinai. 4. We need not suppose that the water
which God was pleased to give at Horeb, ceased to flow as
soon as the Israelites were relieved by it. It is more rea-
sonable to imagine that God directed Moses to strike a
place where there was naturally a spring, though, until the
rock was opened, the water was bound down to subter-
raneous passages ; but after it had taken vent, it might be-
come a fountain, and continue to flow, not only whilst the
Israelites continued in these parts, but to future ages. It
might cause the brook, which descended out of the mount, and
supplied them with water all the time they lay encamped
here, and the brook caused by it may perhaps run to this
day d ; but though this may be true, yet it will not hence
follow that the streams of this brook flowed after the
camp when they departed from Horeb, and took their
journeys out of the wilderness of Sinai into the wilderness
of Paran.

But, IV. The chief argument for supposing the rock to
have followed the Israelites in their journeys through the
wilderness is taken from the words of St. Paul, I Corin-
thians x. 4. The Apostle says, Our fathers did all drink
the same spiritual drink : for they drank of that spiritual Rock
which followed them; and that Rock was Christ. But I think
it is very evident that the Apostle here speaks not of the
rock of Horeb, but of Christ, who, though invisible, was
the spiritual support of the Israelites in the wilderness. In
ver. 3, he alludes to the manna which was given them;
but then treats of the spiritual meat which sustained them,
designing to turn the thoughts of the Corinthians from the
manna to God, who gave the manna, and made it a sufficient
nourishment to his people : Man liveth not by bread alone Q .
The manna of itself had been but a very slender provision j
but, by the direction of God, the morning-dew would have
been an abundant supply ; or he could, if he had pleased, as

d We find from the accounts of mo- commodissimo fonte instructus est. And

dern travellers, that there runs now a in c. 62. speaking of the convent,

brook from mount Horeb, which sup- he says, Monasterium aqua abundat :

plies water to the monastery, called St. rivus enim esc monte defluens monacho-

Saviour's, being a Greek convent si- rum cisternam replet aqua limpida, fri-

tuate at the foot of the mountain, gida, dulci, denique optima, &c.
Chorebus, says Belonius, lib. ii. c. 63. e Matt. iv. 4. Deut. viii. 3.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 39

well have sustained them the whole forty years without any
food at all, as he did Moses in the mount forty days and forty
nights, without his eating bread or drinking water. We must
not therefore look at the manna, as if that was sufficient 1 " to
nourish the people, but consider the power of God, who
was their spiritual meat, and invisibly supported them. In
the same manner we must consider the supply they had of
drink: the rock at Horeb, struck by the rod of Moses,
sent forth waters, but the benefit was not owing to the
rock, but to Christ, who was the spiritual and invisible rock
of his people ; who by his power gave them this supply, and
whose presence was with them, not at this time only, but in
all their journeyings. The meaning of St. Paul is very
plain and easy, and we evidently play with the letter, in-
stead of attending to the design of his words, if we infer
from them, that the rock at Horeb, or any water from it,
followed the Israelites through the wilderness. Upon the
whole, if we had any authority from Scripture to say that
the rock at Horeb followed the camp, or that the waters
from Horeb flowed after the Israelites, we should have no
reason to question the fact; the power of God could have
caused either : but neither Moses, nor any other sacred
writer, says any thing like it, nor was any such fact known
to either Philo or Josephus ; so that I should think it a mere
fiction? of the Rabbins, and that it ought to be rejected. A
due application will enable every sober querist to vindicate the
miracles recorded in Scripture. But it is an idle labour, and
will prove of disservice to religion, to add miracles of our
own making to those which the Scriptures set before us.

Whilst the Israelites were at Rephidim, the Amalekites,
near unto whose country they then encamped h , attacked

f Deut. viii. 3. xxix. 6. went round about the camp of the

e The Rabbins were fruitful inventors Israelites, and gave every one drink at

of this sort of miracles. Jonathan B. his tent-door, and that it followed

Uziel says of the ^ell, which the them until they came to the borders of

Israelites digged at Beer, that Abraham the land of Moab ; but that they lost it

and Isaac and Jacob first digged it : upon the top of an hill over against

but that Moses and Aaron drew it after Beth-Jeshimon. See Targum Jona-

them into the wilderness by the rod, than on Numbers xxxi.
and that it followed them up high h The country of the Amalekitcs lay

hills, and down into low valleys, and next to Seir. Gen. xiv. 7.

40 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK X.

them'; whereupon Moses ordered Joshua to choose out a
number of the ablest men to sustain the assault, and he him-
self went up the hill with his rod in his hand, and Aaron
and Hur with him k . The battle had many turns: whilst
Moses held up his hand, the Israelites had the better;
but whenever Moses let his hand fall, the Amalekites pre-
vailed 1 . Upon observing this event, Aaron and Hur, Moses
being quite tired, caused him to sit down upon a stone 3 and
they, one on each side of him, supported his hands all the
remainder of the day until the evening, and upon this Joshua
obtained a complete victory over the Amalekites" 1 . And the
Lord ordered Moses to leave it upon record, and to remind
Joshua of it, that it was his design utterly to extirpate the
Amalekites"; and this purpose of God was afterwards re-
vealed to Balaam ; and Moses, according to the directions
given him to write it in a book?, took care to record it in
his book of Deuteronomy in the most express termsq. And
because God had vouchsafed the Israelites this victory upon
the holding up his hands, he, in order to give God the
glory, and not to take the honour to himself, built an altar
in memory of it, and called it Jehovah- Nissi, or, The Lord is he
toko exalteth me r ; and he declared to the Israelites, that, for
this base attempt against them, the Lord would war against
the Amalekites from generation to generation 8 ; for

This certainly must be the meaning of the i6th verse
of the i7th chapter of Exodus: the Hebrew words are
difficult to be translated, and I think none of the versions
express clearly the sense of them. We render the place, for
he said, Because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have
war with Amalek, fyc. The vulgar Latin translation runs
thus, Quid manus solii Domini, et helium Domini, erit contra
Amalek : i. e. Because the hand of the throne of the Lord, and
the war of the Lord, will be against Amalek*, This version

i See Deut. xxv. 18. q Deut. xxv. 17, 18, 19.

k Exodus xvii. 9, 10. r Exod. xvii. 15.

l Exodus xvii. n. s Exod. xvii. 16. Deut. xxv. 17, 18.

wVer, ii, 12, 13. ,9.

n Ver. 14. t Ecce manus super sedem, bellum

Numbers xxiv. 20. Domini cum Amalek, &c. Vers. Sy~

P Exodus xvii. 14. r iac. Nunc est mihi quod jurem per

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 41

rather shews the translators to have been at a loss how to
render the place intelligibly, than expresses the true meaning
of it. The LXX. say, on tv X L P^ Kpv(f)aiq, TroAejurj 6 eos'errt
'A/xaA?;** i. e. That the Lord fights [with an hidden hand] i. e.
secretly against Amalek: the sense here is clear and plain ;
but there are no words in the Hebrew text to answer to kv
Xet/oi Kpv<paLa, with an hidden hand* 1 . The Hebrew words are,
Ci jad nal Ces Jah Milcamah Lahovah la Namalek; which
verbally translated are, Because the hand upon the throne of
the Lord, war to the Lord against Amalek*. The place has
evidently the following difficulties : J. There must be some
words understood to fill up the sentence. The hand upon the
throne of the Lord war against Amalek must be supposed to
be the same as, The hand of the Lord is upon his throne, that
there shall be war against Amalek. The sentence must be
thus transposed and filled up to make it bear any sense.

2. In order to its bearing the sense which our English ver-
sion puts upon it, The hand of the Lord is upon his throne,
must be supposed to signify, God has sworn ; his laying his
hand upon his throne must import his taking an oath. But,

3. In all the Old Testament, though the expression of God's
having sworn occurs almost thirty times, yet it is not, I think,
once expressed in words like what we here meet with, but
always by the verb [yitt?] Shaban. The Lord hath sworn, is
[mPP yitEO] NishbanJehovafo. The annotators are at a loss
to ascertain the sense of the place ; and certainly the Hebrew

solium, quod erit Deo bellum in Ama- been originally but one word, 7P1D3
lekitas. Vers. Arabic. Cum juramento and they might derive such a word
dictum est hoc a facie terribilis, cujus from no 3 Casah, to cover, and imagine
Majestas est super solium glorise, fore, that riMDD'jy might be rendered in
ut committatur prselium a facie Domini secret, or covertly. But if this may be a
contra viros domus Amalech. Targum just correction and translation of the
Onkelos. text, the LXX. should have rendered

u It has been suggested to me by a the verse to this purpose, rather than
very learned friend, that the two words as they have translated it. Because his
TV D3, which in the present Hebrew [i. e. Amalek' s] hand has been covertly
text stand next to one another, might against you, the Lord will have war
perhaps be taken by the LXX. to have with Amalek. &c.

x The Hebrew words are.

pbDi"i mrr"? nnnto m, DID Vy T *3
Amalek contra Jehovah bellum Domini thronum supra manus quia.

y Gen. xxii. 16. Judges ii. 16. i Sam. Hi. 14. 2 Sam. iii. 9. Psalm ex. 4. Isaiah
xiv. 24. Ixii. 8. Amos iv. 2, &c.

42 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

words, as our present copies run, are very hard to be recon-
ciled to any sense whatsoever, unless we admit a very unusual
expression for God hath sworn, not to be met with in any other
place of Scripture. As to the LXX. they might perhaps
think the place corrupted by transcribers ; and by putting in
tv \tipl KpvtyaCa, instead of rendering the Hebrew words, they
rather guessed what might make the passage good sense, than
had authority for their translation. If I may be indulged the
liberty, I could conjecture what would give the place a clear
meaning without varying much from the present Hebrew
text. The reason given in Deuteronomy why Amalek should
be utterly destroyed is, because he here attacked the Israel-
ites : the words of Moses are, Remember what Amalek did
unto thee by the way how he met thee, and smote the hind-
most of thee, Sec. Therefore it shall be. when the Lord thy God
hath given thee rest that thou shalt blot out the remembrance
of Amalek from under heaven: thou shalt not forget it z . This
was the reason why God determined to have war with Ama-
lek ; because he here basely assaulted the Israelites. And
now suppose the true reading of the passage before us should
be thus : Ci Jad nal Cem,jehi Milchemah Lahovah be Nama-
lek*, which translated word for word is, Because his hand
hath been against you, the Lord will have war with Amalek,
Sec. The emendation of the text is very little : D3 might
be easily written for DID ; the letters are so similar, that the
difference is scarce perceptible : rT 1 might be written for TP >
for the final 1 might easily be omitted by no very careless
transcriber : and this very small emendation will restore the
text to admit an easy and clear meaning, and supposes
Moses to hint here the very thing which he expressed after-

z Deut. xxv. 17, 1 8, 19.

a p^ntfi mrpb norrtoTpas to T 3
Amalek contra Jehovah bellum erit vos contra manus quia.

i. e.

ejus

Q5b is vobis, Exodus xvi. 23. In like masculine termination, contrary to true
manner to signifying contra, nais may syntax. But to this I think I may an-
be contra vos, or perhaps it was written swer, that the Hebrew language is not
Q 5 -'to more agreeably to the Hebrew always critically exact in this particular,
regimen. It may perhaps be here re- Vid. Capell. Crit. Sac. 1. iii. c. 16. et 1.
marked, that Milchemah is a noun vi. c. 8.
feminine, that I put the verb jchi in the

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 43

wards more copiously, when he came to write what he was
directed to transmit to posterity upon this occasion 13 .

Soon after this victory over the Amalekites, Jethro, the
priest of Midian, Moses's father-in-law, came with Zipporah
his daughter, the wife of Moses, and her two children, Ger-
shom and Eliezer, into the wilderness to the camp at mount
Horeb c . Moses received him with the utmost respect, and
told him all the wonderful works which had been wrought
for their deliverance d . Jethro, full of joy, gave praise to God
for his favours to them 6 , and offered a sacrifice of thanks-
giving, and invited Aaron and the elders of Israel to it f .
The day after, seeing Moses engaged all day long in de-
termining little controversies, he observed to him, that he
was fallen into a way that would be full of fatigue to him-
self, and not give a due dispatch to the public business ; and
therefore he advised him to range the people in classes of
thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and to appoint proper
officers over the several classes, and reserve only matters of
appeal and of the highest moment to his own decisions.
Moses approved of this advice of Jethro, and according to
it appointed such officers as he had directed, to hear and
decide the lesser controversies, and to dispense justice under
him unto the people 11 .

A noble author makes the following reflection upon
Jethro 's advice here given to Moses : he says, that " the
" great founder of the Hebrew state had not perfected his
" model, until he consulted the foreign priest, his father-

b Deut. xxv. 17, 18,, 19. Jethro might perhaps have been ad-

c Exodus xviii. I find some writers mitted to Aaron's sacrifice, but Aaron

imagine, that Jethro's coming to Moses and the Israelites would not, I think,

was not thus early. F. Simon says, have partook of Jethro's; and therefore

that Jethro seems not to have come till Jethro's coming to Moses must have

the second year after the finishing of been just after the victory over the

the tabernacle, as may be proved out Amalekites, as soon as they came to

of Deuteronomy. The learned father Sinai ; and to this time, I think, the

has not cited any passage in Deu- account of Moses, Exodus xviii. 5. does

teronomy to support his opinion, and well fix it.

I cannot find any which appears to d Exodus xviii. 8.

me to favour it. Aaron and the elders e Exodus xviii. 9.

of Israel's coming to Jethro's sacrifice, f Ver. 12.

hints to me, that the law was not yet S Ver. 13 24.

given, nor Aaron consecrated to the h Ver. 25.
priesthood; for if it had been given,

44 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

" in-law, to whose advice he paid such remarkable defer-
" ence'." The reflection insinuates, that a part of the Jewish
polity was a contrivance of Jethro's, and therefore that
the whole cannot be pretended to be a divine institution.
In answer hereto, I would observe, I. That the advice
which Jethro gave Moses, and what Moses did upon it, was
not to perfect his model, as this noble writer is pleased to call
it ; for the advice was given, and first executed, before there
were any steps at all taken towards forming the Jewish
polity; before God had given Moses any laws at all for
the constitution of the Jewish state. But, 2. What Jethro
here advised Moses to, though Moses followed the advice at
the time it was given, nay and afterwards made use of it
again, when circumstances required, was yet never made an
essential part of the Jewish constitution. If we look for the
institutions which Moses has delivered down to us as dic-
tated by God for the government of the people, we shall
find these only : Moses was at first their sole leader and
governor, and Jethro found him acting without assistant
in this capacity 11 . When Moses was called up into mount
Sinai, Aaron and Hur were to supply his place 1 . After this,
Aaron and his sons were appointed to the priests' office m .
Some time after, twelve persons were named, one out of
every tribe, to be princes of the tribes of their fathers,
heads of thousands in Israel, and assistants to Moses and
Aaron in the government of the people . The Levites were
selected to be over the tabernacle, and to minister unto it ;
and upon Moses's complaint, that his burthen was too great,
and that he wanted more assistance, God appointed seventy
elders, and put his spirit upon them, that they might bear
the burthen of the people with Moses, that he might not
bear it himself alone P. These all were indeed appointed to
their respective offices by divine institution, and these were
all the officers that were really so appointed. As to the
rulers of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens,

i Lord Shaftesbury's Charact. vol. iii. m Exod. xxviii.

Mis. ii. ch. i. n Numbers i. 416.

k Exod. xviii. 14. o Ver. 50. See ch. iii.

l Exod. xxiv.i4. P Ch. xi. 16,17.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 45

when Jethro advised Moses to appoint them, he indeed in-
timated to him to consult, if God would command him to
institute^ them : but we are not told that Moses did so ;
but that he hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did
all that he had said, and chose able men, and made them rulers
of thousands, rulers of hundreds, riders of fifties, and rulers of
tens r / so that the text evidently suggests to us that Moses
first instituted these officers, not by divine command, but by
Jethro's direction. In like manner, when Moses afterwards
revived these officers ; (for upon God's giving the law, and
appointing priests and Levites, heads of tribes, and princes
of the congregation, the people must have been new mo-
delled ; and whatever appointments Moses had before made
prudentially, must of course have gone out of use, and been
abolished by the newer institutions ;) I say when Moses
found it expedient to revive the offices of the rulers of thou-
sands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens, he in no wise
hints that he had any direction from God for so doing, but
entirely represents it as a scheme agreed upon by himself and
the people. Moses found the people so multiplied, as to be
too many 8 to be well managed in the hands of those he
had to assist him : this he represented to the people, and
recommended to them to choose proper persons for him to
make rulers over them*. The people approved of what he
had recommended" ; and accordingly, with their consent, he
appointed these officers x . Moses spake unto the people, saying,
I am not able to bear you myself alone : the Lord your God

hath multiplied you How can I bear your cumbrance, and

your burthen, and your strife? Take ye wise men and un-
derstanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make
them rulers over you. And ye answered me, and said, The
thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do. So I took
the chief of your tribes, wise men and known, and made them
heads over you, captains over thousands, and captains over hun-
dreds, and captains over fifties, and captains over tens, and
officers among your tribes. And I charged your judges at that

<i Exod. xviii. 23. t Ver. 12, 13.

r Ver. 24, 25. u Ver. 14.

s Deut. i. 9, 10. x Ibid.

46 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

time, saying, Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge
righteously, &c. Moses has pretty well fixed for us the time
of his thus reinstituting these officers. It was upon the
removal of the camp from Sinai to go into the wilderness of
Paran 2 . The Lord spake unto him, saying*, Ye have dwelt long
enough in this mount; turn you and take your journey, and go
to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh there-
unto : and at that time Moses b spake unto the people about
appointing these officers. A few days after this, the seventy
elders were appointed, for they were appointed at Taberah,
or Kibroth Hattaavah c , and the camp had marched three
days successively before they came hither d . Moses found the
appointment of the officers agreed upon by the people not
fully to answer their occasions, and that he wanted not only
officers under himself to execute his orders, and determine
smaller matters, but assistants of more influence, that might
with himself direct in matters of greater moment. But for
these he does not apply to the congregation, as he did for
the others, but immediately to God, and these were not in-
stituted upon the people's approving the thing he had
spoken to be good for them to do e ; but here God expressly
ordered him to gather to him seventy men of the elders of
Israel, and told him, that he would come down and talk
with him, and give them of his spirit to make f them suffi-
cient for the employment they were to be appointed to. And
thus we may see a very remarkable difference in the institu-
tion of the officers our noble author has remarked upon, if
compared with those who were appointed by divine direc-
tion. I might go further, and observe, that the several offi-
cers, whom God had appointed, continued to have their
name, title, and authority through all the changes of the
Jewish state. The priests, the Levites, the heads of tribes,
the seventy elders, had, all of them, their stated and respective
offices and employments, not under Moses only, but under
Joshua, in the time of the judges, under the kings, in all

z Compare Deut. i. 6, 7. with Numb. c Numbers xi.

x. n, 12, &c. d Numbers x. 33.

a Deut. 1.6,7. e Deut. i. 14.

b Ver. 9. f Numb. xi. 16, 1 7.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 47

times, and under all revolutions. But as to the captains of
thousands, hundreds, of fifties, and of tens, as their insti-
tution was not of divine authority, so their office was not
thus fixed nor lasting. Moses did not bind his successors to
the use of them : God had not prescribed them to him, nei-
ther did he prescribe them to them; for he only gave the
Israelites a general rule, to make themselves judges and offi-
cers in all their gates throughout their tribes, to judge the
people with just judgments; and accordingly, though in-
deed we find officers of these names in every age, yet we
shall not find that the Israelites kept them up in the man-
ner and to the purpose for which Moses appointed them,
but rather that they varied both their number and their
office, as the circumstances of the state required, or the per-
sons who had the appointing these officers thought fit to
employ them. Here therefore is the failure of our noble
author's reflection. He designed to prove some part of the
Jewish polity to be a contrivance of Jethro's, and conse-
quently a mere human institution ; but his instance is a point,
which was indeed an human institution, but not an essential
and established part of the Jewish polity. There are indeed
some learned writers, who have thought these officers of divine
appointment 11 : but whoever will carefully examine, will find
no good foundation for their opinion, and may thereby
effectually silence a cavil, which our modern deists, from
the hint I have considered, think to raise against the Jewish
polity. Jethro made but a short stay with Moses ; for be-
fore they departed from Rephidim Tie went his way into his
own land*.

The Israelites, on the fifteenth day of the third month
after their leaving Egypt, marched from Rephidim into
the wilderness of Sinai, and pitched their camp at the
foot of mount Sinai k : they stayed almost a year in this

Deut. xvi. 1 8. says, in the third month of their exit

h Vid. Sigon. de Rep. Heb. 1. vii. from Egypt, [nirr tDVl] bejom haz-

c. 7. zeh, on the very day, i. e. of their exit,

i Exod. xviii. 27. or on the T5th; for on that day of the

k Exod. xix. i, 2. The words of Mo- first month they came out of Egypt.

ses seem to me to intimate, that the The most learned archbishop Usher

Israelites came to Sinai on the i5th day indeed took the words otherwise. He

of this month. They came hither, Moses supposes bejom hazzeh to refer to the

48 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

place 1 . In the first three days was transacted what is recorded
in the iQth, 2oth, 2ist, 22d, and 23d chapters of Exodus m .
And Moses probably spent some days in writing down
the laws and the judgments which God had given them 11 ;
after which he built an altar, offered sacrifices, and read
what he had written in the book , and the people en-
tered into the most solemn engagement to perform what was
written in it P. After this, Moses and Aaron, Nadab and
Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, went up some
part of the mountain q, and they saw the God of Israel^ and
worshipped hi?n*. And Moses, upon God's commanding it,
having given Aaron and Hur the charge of the people,
went with Joshua up to the top of the mount, and was on
the mount forty days and forty nights* ; during which time
he received the directions and commands contained in
Exodus 25th, and in the following chapters to the end of the
31 st.

It may be here asked, how and in what sense did
Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the elders, see the
God of Israel ? No man hath seen God at any time u . It
seems hard to imagine how the infinite God can be clothed

month, and to intimate that the Israel- pression as is here before us ; for on the

ites came to Sinai on the day of the first day of a month, beachad lachdesh,

month the same in number with the is on the first day of the month. See

month, or on the third day of the Gen. viii. 5, 13. Exodus xl. 2. Levit.

third month. See his Annals. Other xxiii. 24. Numbers i. i. xxix. i.

writers imagine the words bejom haz- xxxiii. 31. Deut. i. 3. Ezra iii. 6.

zeh to signify no more than that they Nehem. viii. 2. Ezek. xxvi. I. xxxi. i.

came to Sinai on the very day they xlv. 18, &c. and thus Moses would

left Rephidim, and that the intimation most probably have here written, if

here intended is, that from Rephidim the first day of the month had been

to Sinai was the journey of but one here intended by him.

day. Vid. Pool's Synop. in loc. There 1 They came to Sinai on the i5th of

are some who would render the verse the third month, in the first year of

to this purpose ; On the third new moon the exit, and they left Sinai on the

after the exit, on the very day, i. e. of 2oth day of the second month of the

the moon, &c. so as to fix the coming second year ; so that they stayed here

to Sinai to be on the first day of this eleven months and five days.

third month. But to this it is obvious m Exod. xix. 1 1.

to answer : the word \mn must be n Exod. xxiv. 4.

here translated month, and not new o Ver. 7.

moon ; for, i. The Israelites coming out P Ver. 7, 8.

of Egypt in the middle of the first <1 Ver. 9.

month, the first day of the third month r Ver. 10.

could be only the second, and not the s Exod. xxiv. n.

third new moon after their exit. 2. The t Ver. 12 18.

sacred writers never use such an ex- u i John iv. 12.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 49

in shape, and bounded within the limits of a form or
figure, so as to become the object of sight to a mortal eye.
The wise heathens apprehended insuperable difficulties in
any such supposition x ; and it must be confessed, that some
of the versions of the Bible do not render the passage lite-
rally. The LXX. translate it, They saw the place, where there
stood the God of Israeli ; and Onkelos, They saw the glory of
the God of Israel 2 : and the commentators, from what Moses
in another place remarks to the Israelites, that they had seen
no manner of similitude, do generally conclude, that he did
not intend here to intimate, that he or the nobles of Israel
did really and visibly see God. But I would beg leave to
oifer to the reader some thoughts that occur to me whenever
I read this passage :

i. I cannot but observe that Moses does not say, that he
and the nobles of Israel saw the invisible God; the ex-
pression is, that they saw the God of Israel*. No man indeed
hath ever seen the invisible God b , nor can see him c ; but the
God of Israel, the divine Person, who is many times styled
in the Old Testament the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob A , frequently appeared to them, and was
in after-ages made flesh*, and for about three and thirty
years dwelt on earth amongst men. 2. That this person ap-
peared to the patriarchs of old in a real body, was evident
to them by the same infallible proofs as those by which he
shewed himself alive to his disciples after his passion*. After
he was risen from the dead, he was seen of the disciples,
speaking to themS : and so he was in divers places and at
sundry times to Abraham 11 , to Isaac 1 , and to Jacob k . The
disciples not only beheld him, but they felt him, and han-
dled him, and were as sure that he was really with them,
as they were that a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as they saw

x 'fly 5e Kal a-ta/maTos a.vQpa>irlvov Kal d Gen. xxvi. 24. xxviii. 13. Exod. iii.

&pas fffri TIS Bey Kal Saljuovi Koivuvia. 6. See vol. ii. b. ix. Acts vii. 2. and

Kal x-P ts i *pyov ^7817 :al rovro ireia-B^ai. Gen. xvit. I .
Plut. in Numa, p. 62. ed. Par. 1624. e See vol. i. b. v. John i. 14.

7 "I5ov T~bv r6irov ov tl<rrfiKct &ce? 6 f Acts i. 3.

fbs rov 'Iffpafa. MS. A. g Ibid.

z Targum Onkelos. h Gen. xii. 7. xvii. i. xviii. i.

a Exod. xxiv. 10. i Gen. xxvi. 24.

b Coloss. i. 15. k Gen. xxxii. 30. xxxv. 9.

c i Tim. vi. 1 6.

50 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

him have 1 . In like manner Jacob experienced as sensible a
presence when he wrestled with him m . WTiilst the disciples
believed not, but wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any
meat? And they gave him apiece of a broiled fish, and of an
honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them 11 . And
agreeably hereto, when THE LORD, with two angels accom-
panying him, appeared unto Abraham in the plains of
Mamre, after Abraham had the calf dressed, and set it be-
fore them, whilst he stood by them under the tree, they did
eatP. And now from all these passages, I think, I see it to
have been real and indisputable fact, that the person who is
here styled the God of Israel did frequently for a short or a
longer space of time, according to his own good will and
pleasure, assume and unite himself to a real body, and thereby
appear visible to such persons as he thought fit to manifest
himself to in this manner ; and consequently that he might
be thus seen by Moses and the elders on the mount. His
appearance on the mount was indeed glorious q , attended
with a splendour he had not before been seen in to man ;
and perhaps something like it afterwards was his transfigura-
tion before the three disciples r : but the text of Moses does
in no wise suggest that he and the elders saw the God of
Israel in all his glory. Moses indeed did afterwards desire
thus to see him 8 ; but was answered, that he was not capable
of it* ; and accordingly at that time, while the glory of the
Lord passed by him, Moses was put in a clift of the rock,
and the Lord covered him with his hand, while he passed
by u . But here upon the nobles of Israel he laid not his hand* :
they had an tmintercepted view of his appearance, and con-
sequently he appeared to them with a lesser degree of glory,
such as men might see and live.

As to what may be pretended of the wise and learned
heathens, that they by the light of nature would have judged
such an appearance as is here spoken of absurd and im-
possible, I would observe of them, that it is indeed true,

1 Luke xxiv. 39. r Matt. xvii. Mark ix.

m Gen. xxxii. s Exod. xxxiii. 18.

n Luke xxiv. 41, 42, 43. t Ver. 20.

Gen. xviii. i. u Ver. 22.

P Ver. 8. x Exod. xxiv. 1 1 .

q Exod. xxiv. 10.

PROFANK HISTORY.

that their earliest philosophy led them to think, that the
lights of heaven were the gods that governed the world? ; and
to ascribe no human shape to these divinities, nor to set up
idols of human form in their ancient image-worship, but
rather to consecrate sacred animals, and to dedicate their
images, the images of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creep-
ing things*; these they imagined to be proper objects or
directors of their worship, and they have left us what they
thought a philosophical reason for the use they made of
them a : but notwithstanding all this, in time a newer theo-
logy succeeded among them, and in all nations, except the
more eastern, which had but little knowledge of, or concern
in, what happened in Canaan, and the countries adjacent to
it, or which were instructed from it, gods of human form
were introduced into every temple, and human images
were erected to them : and yet in after-times, when their
philosophers came to speculate upon this subject, both this
worship and theology was thought by them to have been
the invention of fabulists and poets, and not to have been
derived from reason and truth b ; they thought it mythic
or popular, but in no wise agreeable to their notions of the
nature of divine beings , but rather contrary to them. It is
remarkable, that this their later theology was never thought
of in any nation, until after the Lord had appeared unto
Abraham, unto Isaac, unto Jacob, unto Moses ; until after
an angel had appeared unto Balaam* 1 , unto Joshua 6 , and to
divers other persons ; not until after the fame of these ap-
pearances had spread into and obtained credit in divers
countries. From all which I am apt to conclude, that not
science or speculation, but a belief of facts well attested, led
the heathens into this their newer theology f . What was

y Wisdom xiii. 2. See vol. i. b. v. physicon, tertium civile. Mythicon ap-

vol. ii. b. viii. pellatur, quo maxime utuntur poetu;;

z Vol. ii. b. viii. physicon, quo philosophi ; primuin

a 'Ayair^reov olv ov ravra n/jLcovras, quod dixi, in eo sunt multa contra

&AAa 8m TOVTWV rb Qsiov, us evap'ye- dignitatem et naturam immortalium

<rr4p<av IffAiTTpwv Kal <j>v<ri yfyov6T(Dv. ficta, &c. Varro in Fragment, p. 31.
Plut. de Iside et Osiride, p. 382. ed. Par. d Numbers xxii.

1624. e Josh. v. 13.

b Vid. Plat, de Rep. 1. ii. f There are many passages in the

c Tria sunt genera theologiae, eorum- heathen writers, which intimate them

que unum Mythicon appellatur, alterum to have thought it a fact, which could

VOL. II. E

52 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

said of the appearances of angels unto men amongst the He-
brews, and to some other persons of other nations, was
known to have been fact, beyond a possibility of contradic-
tion : and hence it came to pass, that though philosophy
suggested no such innovation ; yet the directors of the sacra
of heathen kingdoms could not well avoid an imitation, of
what, as fact, could not be denied to have happened in the
world ; and this by degrees led them to their new gods.
And thus if we consult the ancient heathens, instead of find-
ing from their philosophy objections sufficient to weaken the
credibility of what the Scriptures record concerning the ap-
pearances of divine and superior beings, we may, from the
alteration which they made in their sacred institutions, be
induced to think these Scripture facts to have been so well
attested to the world, that even nations not immediately
concerned in them could not but admit the truth of them,
and think them of weight enough to cause them to vary
from what they had before esteemed the principles both of
their science and religion. But

Moses is said to have remarked to the Israelites, that they
had seen no manner of similitude. I answer ; Nothing can, I
think, be concluded from the passage alluded to^, to contra-
dict what Moses relates Exod. xxiv. that he and the elders
saw the God of Israel. The passage cited from Deuteronomy
expressly refers to the day in which God delivered, in an
audible voice, the Ten Commandments from the mount to
the people : and Moses's design in it was, to caution them,
by a due regard to that day's transactions, to be exceeding
careful not to fall into idolatry. He exhorts them, ver. 9,
10. never to forget the things which their eyes had seen, on the
day that they stood before the Lord in Horeb. He reminds
them, ver. 12, that in that day the Lord spake unto them out of
the midst of the fire: that they heard the voice of the words, but
saw no similitude; only they heard a voice. He then again

in no wise be denied, that the gods had c. 2. Again, Prceterea ipsorum Deorum

appeared unto men. Thus, Scepe visa prcesentia;, quales supra commemoravi,

forma Deorum quemvis non hebetem aut declarant, ab his et civitatibus, et sin-

impium Deos praesentes esse confiteri gulis hominibus consult. Id. ibid. c. 66.

coegerunt. Tullius De Nat. Deor. 1. ii. g Deut. iv. 15.

AND P11OFANE HISTORY* OD

charges them to take good heed to themselves, lest they
should make the similitude of any figure ; by observing again
to them, ver. 15, that they saw no similitude on the day that
the Lord spake unto them in Horeb out of the midst of the fire.
On this day it was that God instructed them how he would
be worshipped, and commanded them to make to themselves
no manner of image h ; and therefore to this particular day's
transaction Moses might well appeal, in order to charge
them in the strictest manner to be careful to observe this
commandment : and accordingly, what he here offers is by
his own express words limited and confined to the transac-
tions of the day here referred to ; and I do not see how any
thing can be concluded, from what is here said, against what
he may have suggested to have happened on any other day
whatsoever.

About these times, Lelex, who was the first king of La*
conia, flourished in that country. Lelex seems to have
been somewhat elder than Moses : he came originally from
Egypt 1 , made divers settlements in many places ; in Caria k ,
in Ionia 1 , at Ida near Troy m , and afterwards in Greece, in
Acarnania n , in JEtolia , in BceotiaP, and last of all in La*
conia. When Lelex began his travels, he took the same
rout that Cecrops and the father of Cadmus had before
taken : he went up into Phoenicia, thence into the lesser Asia,
and from thence he crossed over into Greece, and made set*
tlements in many places, until at length he came into La-
conia. In all parts where he made any stay, he endeavoured
to form and civilize the uncultivated people ; and probably,
when he removed, he left some of his followers to complete
his designs, and upon every procession to a new country, he
took with him such new associates, as had a mind to accom-
pany him from the places where he had last resided. By
these means the company he commanded would in a few
years be a mixed multitude, gathered out of different na-

h Exod. xx. 4, 5. H. *. 86, 87.

i Atyovo-iv ol Mtyapf'is AcAeya d$tK(f- 1 Strab. lib. xiv. p. 640.

fifvov e| AlyviTTov Pcuritevcrai.. Pausan. m Id. lib. vii. p. 321.

in Atticis, c. 39. n id. ibid.

k Vid. Strab. Geog. lib. vii. p. 321. o Id. ibid,

lib. xiii. p. 611. ed. Par. 1620. Homer. P Id. ibid, et in lib. ix. p. 401.

54 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

tions : and his followers having been of this sort, seemed to
Strabo to be the reason for the Greeks calling him Lelex,
and them Leleges^. It was found in writing in the times of
the Maccabees, that the Lacedaemonians and the Jews were
brethren, and that the Lacedaemonians were descended of
the stock of Abraham*. I should imagine that this Lelex
was an Israelite ; and that as divers eminent persons of the
Egyptians, upon the conquest the Pastors made of their
country, fled with as many as would follow them into fo-
reign lands 8 ; so some of the Hebrews, when they were
pressed with slavery, might do the same thing, and this
Lelex might be one of them ; and when he had obtained a
settlement in Laconia, both what we find in Pausanias of his
coming out of Egypt*, and this hint of his relation to the
Hebrews, might be recorded of him. Some of the Greek
writers mistake the time of his coming into Greece ; they
report it to have been about thirteen generations after Pho-
roneus king of Argos u : but we must not imagine it so late;
for from Menelaus who warred at Troy up to Lelex, we find
ten successive kings of this country, exclusive of Menelaus x ;
and in Castor's list we have but fourteen successions from
Phoroneus down to Agamemnon, the leader of the Greeks,
contemporary with Menelaus ?; so that Lelex cannot have
been at most above three or four reigns later than Phoroneus.
We find an hint in Strabo, which may well fix for us the
time of Lelex's entering Laconia: he records, that the Le-
leges were in Bceotia when Cadmus came thither, and that
Cadmus expelled them that country z : they were hereupon
compelled to a further travel ; and therefore at this time they
and their leader marched to Laconia, and began the king-
dom of Laceda3monia. Cadmus came into Bceotia, A. M.
2486 a , and therefore to this year I should fix Lelex's going
into Laconia; and according to this computation he came
into Laconia in the reign of Triopas or Crotopus, the fourth

q Vid. Strab. lib. vii. p. 322. * Jd. in Laconic.

r i Maccabees xii. 21. y Euseb. in Chronico.

s See vol. ii. b. viii. z Strab. Geog. 1. ix. p. 401. ed. Par.

t Pausan. in Attic, c. 39. 1620.

u Id. ibid. a See vol. ii. b. viii.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 55

or fifth king of Argos b from Phoroneus ; and agreeably to
this computation, we may well suppose ten kings of Lace-
daemonia from Lelex to Menelaus ; but if we place Lelex
lower, there can be no room for such a succession. I might
add, that it further appears that Lelex lived about these
times, from what Pausanias records of Polycaon, his younger
son, that he married Messene the daughter of Triopas c ; so
that Lelex and Triopas were about contemporaries. I sup-
pose Lelex somewhat elder than Moses; his coming into
Laconia, after so many travels, must have been towards the
end of his own life ; but the year 2486, in which he en-
tered that country, falls about the middle of Moses's days,
in Moses's 53d year, 27 years before he led the Israel-
ites out of Egypt. We are nowhere told how long Lelex
governed his new settlement ; his eldest son Myles succeeded
him d , and at Myles's death, Eurotas son of Myles became
king 6 : Eurotas at his death left no male heirs f , and Polycaon
the younger son of Lelex was settled in another country?;
and hence it happened, at the demise of Eurotas, that the
crown of Laconia went into another family, and Lacedaemon
son of Jupiter and Taygete was promoted to it h . Pausanias
has recorded the names of the Lacedemonian kings' ; and
from Lelex to Menelaus who warred at Troy they are as
follows ; Lelex, Myles, Eurotas, Lacedeemon, Amyclas, Ar-
galus, Cynortas, CEbalus, Hippocoon, Tyndareus, and Me-
nelaus. Castor and Pollux were the sons of Tyndareus k , and
engaged in the Argonautic expedition 1 ; but they were never
kings of Lacedeemonia, but died before their father 111 ; and
upon their deaths Tyndareus sent for Menelaus to succeed
him in his kingdom 11 .

The famous Jupiter of the Greeks was also contemporary
with Moses. He was son of Saturn, a king of Crete : the

b Triopas was noted by the ancient h Id. in Laconic,

writers to live about the times of Ce- i Id. ibid,

crops. See vol. ii. b. viii. k Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 9.

- Pausan. in Laconic, c. i. et in Mes- 1 Apollon. Argon, et Val. Flacc.

senic. c. i. m Apollod. 1. iii. c. 10.

d Id. in Laconic, ubi sup. n id. ibid.

e Id. ibid. o Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 68. Apollod.

f Id. ibid. Biblioth. 1. i.

K Id. in Messenic. ubi sup.

56 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

remains we now have of the ancient writers seem to give
but a confused account of the early history of the Cretans ;
though it is remarkable, that the Cretans were formerly so
famous for their history, as to have the wisest of men think
it worth while to travel to them to peruse their records P:
but of what now remains about them, almost all is fable ;
though I cannot but think a careful inquirer may still col-
lect particulars, and give them more light than they are
generally thought capable of receiving. Cres was king of
Crete about the 56th year of Abraham i; Talus was son of
Cres, Vulcan of Talus, and Rhadamanthus of Vulcan 1 " :
about the times of this Rhadamanthus 8 , we may place the
Dactyli Idsei 1 : they were five brothers, as many in number
as the fingers of a man's hand, and for that reason called
Dactyli u . One of these Dactyli was probably named Ju-
piter ; for there was a more ancient Jupiter than the son of
Saturn x , who was father of the Curetesy, and brother of
Ouranus 2 ; so that Ouranus might be another of the Dac-
tyli : Saturn was son of Ouranus a , and Jupiter was son of
Saturn b . From Abraham to Moses are seven descents ; Abra-
ham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Cohath, Amram, Moses ; and there
are about as many from Cres to Jupiter; namely, Cres,
Talus, Vulcan, Rhadamanthus, Ouranus, Saturn, Jupiter.
If Ouranus and the rest of the Dactyli were of the same de-
scent with Rhadamanthus, we have but six ; but if they were
in the descent next after him, we have exactly seven, as in
the family of Abraham. Diodorus Siculus mentions no kings
of Crete between Cres and the Dactyli ; but it is observ-
able, that he does not say that the Dactyli flourished in or

P 'Ey<a re nal 2<$Aa>v 6 'ABijvaios ir\(f>- which their ancestors had borne ages

<ravTS jUf fls Kp-firyv /caret T^V Kfidi before them.

IffTopiav. Diogen. Laert. in vit. Thalet. * Diodor. Sic. 1, v. c. 64.

1 Euseb. in Chronic, u Id, ibid. Strabo Geog. 1. x. p. 473,

r Cinsethon. in Pausan. Arcad. c. 53. ed. Par. 1620.

s We are not to suppose the Rha- x Diodor. l.iii. c. 61.

damanthus here spoken of to be the y Id. ibid,

same person with one of that name, z Id. ibid.

who was brother of Minos; nor the a Id. 1. v. c. 66. Apollod. Bibl. 1. i.

Vulcan here mentioned to be the same b Diodor. 1. v. c. 69, 70, 71. Apol-

with Vulcan son of Jupiter : persons lod. ubi sup,
of later ages frequently had the names

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 57

next after the times of Ores : Diodorus reckoned up the
worthies that lived between Ores and Saturn, whom the
ages which succeeded had mentioned with honour ; and it
is easy to imagine, that there might be two or three de-
scents between the times of Ores and the Dactyli, in which
nothing memorable was done, in the way of either great
actions or useful inventions, to bear their fame down to pos-
terity ; and so the names of those that lived in these genera-
tions might either not come to Diodorus, or he not think
it worth while to mention them. If Ores himself had not
excelled those that lived before him, in teaching his coun-
trymen many things conducive to their public welfare ,
Diodorus had probably taken no notice of him : and had
his successors been as eminent as he was, their names per-
haps had been recorded by him. But after the death of
Cres d , no advance being made either in arts or government,
until the Dactyli, the names between Ores and their times
were omitted by Diodorus.

Ouranus lived in the eastern parts of Crete ; for his son
Saturn afterwards removed westward 6 : Ouranus married
Tita?a f , who, according to the custom of these times, which
was, to give the names of the elements and lights of heaven
(they being the deities now worshipped) to eminent persons,
took the name of Terra or Tellus, as her husband was
called Coelum or Ouranus. The children born of these two
parents were first the Centimani ; namely, Briareus, Gyes,
and CseusS : the fabulous writers say, these men had an
hundred hands and fifty heads apiece h : they were of bigger
size, of greater strength 1 , and perhaps of more cunning and
contrivance than common men ; and fable has given them
the hands and heads of multitudes, for their being superior
to single men in their wisdom and their valour. Ouranus

c Tbv /wei/ j3a(Ti\ea Kpfjra Ka.Xovfj.fvov kings, nor any government set up in

7rAe?<rra Kal /j.fyiffra Karh T^V VT\GOV eu- Crete in their names,
peti/ TO. Swd/JLeva T~bv noivbv ru>v avdpcoircov e Diodor. c. 66.
fiiov wfyeXriffai. Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 64. f Td. ibid.

d Perhaps Cres having none to second S Apollod. Biblioth. 1. i. c. i.
him, the useful designs he attempted h Id. ibid.

might drop at his death ; and though ' MeyeOei T avvirfp&\i\Toi K*\ SvvJi/j.i

he had the descendants we have men- Ka0et<rTT)/ceo-c/. Id. ibid,
tioned, yet none of them might be

58 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK X.

sent them to inhabit the land of Tartarus ; for here we find
them in power and command in the days of Jupiter * : what
or where the country was which was thus named, may be
difficult to determine : Pluto was afterwards king of it 1 , and
I should imagine it to be no part of Crete ; for when Pluto
took away Proserpine from her mother Ceres, Ceres sought
her, Kara iraa-av rr\v yr\v, i. e. all Crete over, but could not
find her m ; afterwards she heard that she was with Pluto ;
so that Pluto's dominions were not in Crete, but in some
foreign country. We are told by Apollodorus, that the
Cyclopes were sent into this land of Tartarus", and Homer
appears to think they lived in the island of Sicily ; and
Strabo imagined him in this point to have given us not fiction,
but true history? : and we find Thucydides, though he had
nothing to offer about the rise or exit of this set of men,
whence they came hither, or whither they removed ; yet
not doubting but that they were of the most ancient in-
habitants of this island q ; arid agreeably hereto, Tartarus the
father of Typhon appears from Apollodorus to have lived in
Sicily in the age I am treating of r ; and in these days pro-
bably this island was called after his name. This land of
Tartarus was said to be as far distant from the earth, as the
earth is from heaven 8 : this might be the ancient Cretan ac-
count of it, and by the earth they might mean their own
island, and intend only to assert that Tartarus was at an un-
measurable distance from their shore ; and unquestionably
from Crete to Sicily was a considerable voyage in those
ages. As Pluto, from his having been the person who in-
vented the rites and ceremonies that were used at funerals*,
came in after-ages to be called the god of the dead ; so the
country where he had been king was reputed to be their

k Apollod. Biblioth. 1. i. c. 2. r Id. ibid. 1. i. c. 6. . 3.

1 Id. ibid. s Tdiros 5e OVTOS roffovrov airb 77)5

m A-fifj.r)Tpa Se /xera \a/j.irdS(i>v vvur/ts ^x a " / SiatrrTj/ua 8ffov air' ovpavov 777.

TC KaL T]fjLpas KO.TO. ira&av TTJV yfiv 77- Apollod. 1. i. c. I. . l.

rovira -rrfpt-hft. Apoll. Bibl. 1. i. c. 5. * Tbi> 8' "AS??*/, \fyerai, ra irepl TCIS

n Id. ibid. 1. i. c. i. rcupas, ital ras K<popas al rifj.as TWV

o Odyss. ix. TsQvt&rtav KaTaSe?|at 8t2> Kal rS>v rere-

P Strabo Geog. 1. i. p. 2Q. ed. Par. X^VTIJK^-TWV 6 0ebs ovrus Trapft\r)7rTai

1620 Kvpitvtiv. Diodor. Sic. 1. v. p. 233.
<1 Thucyd. Hist. 1. vi.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 59

region, and all the gloomy fictions imagined to belong to the
state of the departed were related to have their place in this
land of Tartarus : but it is obvious to remark, that these
fables were not invented until ages after the times of the
Centimani, and not until long after Sicily ceased to be
called by this its ancient name. 2. The Cyclopes were also
sons of Ouranus and Tellus u : their names were Harpes,
Steropes, and Brontes : they were said to have but one eye
apiece, and that situate in the middle of their foreheads x :
these men were the archers of their times, and they usually
shut one eye to take their aim in shootingY; and this oc-
casioned the fable of their having one eye only : Ouranus
sent them to Tartarus unto their brethren 2 . 3. Ouranus
and Tellus were the parents of the Titanes also, whose names
were Oceanus, Ceeus, Hyperion, Crius, lapetus, and Sa-
turn a ; and of the Titanides, who were Tethys, Rhea, The-
mis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, and Thia b . Tellus the
wife of Ouranus had also other children, namely, Phorcus,
Thaumas, Nereus, Euryboaa, and Ceto, by a person named
Pontus, who perhaps after Ouranus's death was her second
husband ; and Ouranus had several children by a concubine
named Ops ; they were Porphyrion, Halcyoneus, Ephialtes,
Clytius, Enceladus, Polybotes, Gratian, and Thoon. Tellus
made a voyage into Sicily, and stayed there some time, until
she had a son named Typhon, by Tartarus, a person of the
highest eminence in Sicily in these ages d . Ops was no

u Apollod. 1, i. c. i.

x Id. ibid.

y I have forgot from whom I had
this conjecture : I think it is Eusta-
thius's. But I would observe, that the
ingenious annotator upon the English
Homer, whose real worth, as well as

of a broad eye in the forehead of one
of these Cyclops, might relate it ac-
cordingly, and impose it as a truth
upon the eredulity of the ignorant.
It is notorious, that things equally
monstrous have found belief in all
' ages." See Dr. Broome's notes upon

learning, makes it a pleasure to me to Homer's Odyssey, b. ix. 119.

say I have a friendship with him, gives z Apollodor. ubi sup.

a better account of this fable of the a Apollodor. ibid. Diodor. 1. v. c. 66.

Cyclopes ; ascribing it to their wearing b Apollodor. Bibl. 1. i. c. i. Dio-

an head-piece, or martial vizor, that dorus mentions only five, and calls them

had but one sight through it. " The Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe,

" vulgar," says he, " form their judg- and Thetis, 1. v. c. 66.

" ments from appearances; and a ma- c Apollodor. 1. i. c. 2. . 5,

" riner who passed these coasts at a d Id. c. 6.

" distance, observing the resemblance

60 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

Cretan, but a foreigner ; she came into Crete out of a more
northern nation 6 : she is often taken to be the same person
as Tellus ; but it is evident she was not so ; probably she was
the Cybele of the ancients.

At the death of Ouranus, his son Saturn had his king-
dom. It is said that Saturn castrated and deposed his father f :
but we have no reason to imagine that he did so, or that
what is told us of the birth of the furies from Ouranus s
was real fact. Varro judiciously thought these relations to
be parts of what he calls the Mythic theology 11 , which af-
forded many narrations of imaginary actions never really
done, but founded upon the ancient philosophy and religion
historically put together 1 . Saturn married his sister Rhea,
and had by her three sons and three daughters, Jupiter,
Neptune, Pluto, Vesta, Ceres, and Juno k . It is said of Sa-
turn, that he eat up his children as soon as they were born ;
that Jupiter only escaped, by a contrivance of his mother
Rhea, who bundled up a stone in his clothes, and sent it to
Saturn, which, he not doubting but that it was his new-
born son, took and eat up instead of him. Jupiter, they tell
us, was put out to nurse by his mother to the Curetes. In
time, they bring Saturn's children all upon the stage again,
and represent Jupiter as compelling his father, by a drink, to
discharge his stomach of them, and of the stone with them 1 .
Varro has given us a philosophic solution of this fable also m :
but I would observe, that Saturn was the first in these parts
that introduced a regularity of diet amongst his people", and
he might perhaps think it a matter of moment to begin

e "fiTTiv, /j.lav rS>v $ inrepftopewv irapa- seminibuft nascitur. Varro in Frag. p.

yevofjLfvwv irapOevcov. Apoll. c. 4. . 4. 42. ed. Seal. 1619.

f Apollodor. c. i. k Diodor. Apollodor. ubi sup.

g Id. ibid. 1 Apollodor. Bibl. 1. i.

h Vid. Varron. Frag. p. 31. ed. Seal. m Saturnum dixerunt, quse nata ex

1619- eo essent, devorare solitum, quod eo

i See what I have offered upon this semina, unde nascerentur, redirent; et

subject, vol. ii. b. viii. Saturnus -fal- quod illi pro Jove gleba objecta est

cem habet ob agriculturam. Quod cce- devoranda, significat manibus humanis

him pair em Saturnus castrasse in fa- obrui coeptas serendo fruges antequam

bulls dicitnr, hoc significat, penes subtilitas arandi esset inventa. Varro in

Saturnum, non penes coelum, semen Fragment, p. 42. ed. Seal. 1619.

esse divinum ; hoc propterea quantum n Diodor. 1. v. c. 66.
intelligi datur, quia nihil in ccelo de

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 61

from the first with his own children. We find the nursing
and feeding infants with proper food became a sort of science
in the generation next after him, and had directors appointed
to take care of it . If Saturn had formed any scheme of this
sort, and upon this account took his children as soon as born
from their mother ; if, as soon as they were fit for it, he sent
them abroad for education into some foreign land; and the
figure they all afterwards made in life renders it highly pro-
bable that they had had better instruction than Crete was
at this time able to give them ; this might be a suificient
foundation for the fable handed down to us concerning
Saturn. Ehea sent Jupiter to the Curetes ; and a bundle of
clothes, with a stone wrapped up in them to make them
heavy, was carried where Saturn ordered, instead of him ; and
when Jupiter was grown up, and came home to his father,
and Saturn thought fit to have his other children recalled
from their foreign education ; as he was before said to have
eat them, so now he might be represented to have vomited
them up again. The fancy of the mythologists was extrava-
gant beyond measure ; and no representation could appear so
monstrous or ridiculous, but they could think it ingenious
to dress up and disguise the plainest and most common trans-
actions of life in it P.

When Saturn died, Jupiter succeeded to his kingdom 1.
Here again the mythologists give us fable, and suggest to us,
that Jupiter deposed his father, and parted his dominions
between himself and his brethren 1 : but Diodorus informs
us that there were other accounts of him; that he came to
his crown at Saturn's death as his rightful heir, without at-
tempts of his own to obtain a succession, or endeavours of
others to prevent it 8 . He married his sister Juno*, and by

e <f>a<rlv eupeo/ r^\v ra>v vt\- r Apollod. 1. i. C. 2.

TT'KDV iraiSiwv Oepdireiav, Kal rpotyds nvas s Tives (Jikv tyaviv avTbv yueri

apfjio^ovffas rfj <j>vffei rS>v /3pcc/>cDf . Dio- av6p(aircavrovKp6vov /J.Tdffra(rivel

dor. c. 72. 8ia8ea<r0ai r^v ficuntetav, ov filq,

P See vol. ii. b. viii. 'Ev ftp vavrl ^uffoa/ra rbv Trorepo, vo/j.i/j.<as Se Kal Si-

alwvi iro\\a ptv Trd\ai Cfvp.^a.vra. farHTra. Kattas a^uadevTa TCIVTTJS rrjs Ttfrijs. Dio-

fivai irfTroii\Ka.<Tiv is robs iro\\ovs y ol dor. 1. v. c. 70-

TO?S aArjfleWeiroiKoSofioCj'Tej tycvtr/ucW. * Diodor. ibid. Apollod. Bibl. 1. i. c. 3.

Pausan. Hesiod. eoyov.

q Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 71.

62 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

her had children, Hebe, Ilithya, Argos, Mars, and Vulcan u .
He had several other wives ; i . Metis, by whom he had Pal-
las x . 2. Themis, who bare him Irene, Eunomia, and Dica,
who were called the Hora3, and Clotho, Lachesis, and Atro-
pos, who were called the Fates y. 3. Euronome was the
mother of Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia 7 . 4. Of Styx,
or rather Ceres, was born Proserpine a . 5. Of Mnemosyne
were born the Muses, who have commonly been said to be
nine in number : Varro thought they were originally three
only b . 6. Latona bare him Diana and Apollo c . 7. Venus
was born to him of Dione d . 8. Mercury of Maia e . 9. Bac-
chus of Semele f : and he had several other children, both
sons and daughters, by divers other women. But let us en-
deavour first to fix with a little more certainty the times in
which Jupiter lived, and after that we may take a further
view of the transactions of his life.

Jupiter lived about eight or nine generations before the
Trojan war: this may be very clearly computed by going
through the genealogies of those who are recorded to be his
descendants. Thus jEthlius, king of Elea in Greece, was
son of Jupiter, and of Protogenia, the daughter of Deuca-
lionS; his son Endymion succeeded him h : Epeus son of

Diodor. 1. v.c. 70. Apollod. Bibl. vitas ilia locaverat, quia in somnis eas
1. i. c. 3. Hesiod. eoyov. viderat, aut tot se cujusquam illorum
x Hesiod. ibid. Apollodorus supposes oculis demonstraverant, sed quia fa-
Thetis the daughter of Nereus to have cile erat animadvertere omnem so-
borne him Pallas. Bibl. 1. i. c. 3. . 6. num, qui materies cantilenarum est,
y Hesiod. Apollod. triformem esse natura; aut enim edi-
z lid. tur voce, sicut est eorum, qui faucibus
a Diodor. lib. v. c. 2. Hesiod. 0eo- sine instrumento canunt, aut flatu sic-
yov. Apollod. 1. i. c. 3. et c. 5. ut tubarum et tibiarum, aut pulsu sicut
b Apol. 1. i, c. 3. Varro dicit, Ci- in cytharis, et tympanis, et quibus-
vitatem nescio quam (neque enim re- dam aliis, quse percutiendo sonora fiunt.
cordor nomen) locasse apud tres ar- Varro in Fragment, p. 207- Vid. Au-
tifices terna simulachra Musarum, quae yustin. de Doctrin. Christian. 1. ii. c. 17.
in templo Apollinis, Deo poneret, ut c Apollodor. 1. i. c. 4. A^Tyrpos 5e
quisquis artificum pulchriora formas- "Apre/jLiv dvyarepa elvai, /cal ov ArjTovs y
set, ab illo potissimum electa emeret. 6vra AlyvirrlcDV rbv \6yov, AiVx^Ao*
Itaque contigisse, ut opera sua quoque e5i'5a|ei/ Evtyopiwvos Tois"EAAi?i/as. Pau-
illi artifices aeque pulchra explicarent, san. in Arcad. c. 37.
et placuisse civitati omnes novem, at- d Apollod. c. 3.
que omnes emptas esse, ut Apollinis e Id. 1. iii. c. 10. . 2.
templo dicarentur, quibus postea dicit f Vid. quse sup. Strab. Geog. 1. x.
Hesiodum poetam imposuisse voca- p. 473. ed. Par. 1620.
bula. Non ergo ait, Jupiter novem g Pausan. 1. v. c. i. Apollod. Bibl.
Musas genuit, sed tres fabri ternas fe- 1. i. c. 7. It ought to be here rernark-
cerunt. Tres autem non propterea ci- ed, that yEthlius was by some of the

AND PROFANE HISTOllY.

Endymion succeeded him': JEtolus brother to Epeus was
his successor k , and after ^Etolus reigned Eleus his nephew 1 :
at Eleus's death, Augeas son of Eleus had the kingdom" 1 :
Agasthenes, son of Augeas, succeeded his father", and
Polyxenes, son of Agasthenes, grandson of Augeas, com-
manded at Troy : and thus, if we count from Jupiter to
the Trojan war, we find nine successions, or computing
Epeus and ^Etolus, who were brothers, to be in the same line
of descent, eight generations. In the family of Thoas
the son of Andraemon, who commanded the ^Etolians in
the Trojan warP, there are ten descents ; for Thoas was six
from JEtolus 1 !, and ^Etolus as above was four from Jupiter.
In like manner we find ten descents from Jupiter to Dio-
medes, four to ^Etolus as before ; Pleuron was son of ^Eto-
lus r , Agenor of Pleuron 8 , (Eneus of Agenor*, Tydeus of
CEneus u , and Diomedes of Tydeus x . If we go into an-
other branch of Jupiter's family, we shall find accounts
much the same. Areas was son of Jupiter, born of Callistho
daughter of Lycaon7 : Areas succeeded Nyctimus the eldest
son of Lycaon in the kingdom of Arcadia 2 : Azanas son of
Areas succeeded him a : Clitor son of Azanas succeeded his
father b : Epitus a nephew of Azanas succeeded Clitor , and
Aleus another nephew succeeded Epitus d ; at Aleus's death
his son Lycurgus had the crown 6 , and at his death he left
it to Echemus f : Agapenor grandson of Lycurgus succeeded
EchemusS, and led the Arcadians to Troy : and thus from
Nyctimus, who may be supposed to be coeetaneous with
Jupiter, to Agapenor, are nine successions ; and, counting
Clitor, Ipitus, and Aleus, who were brothers' children, to

ancients thought the son of JEolus. See s Id. ibid.

Pausan. 1. v. c. 8. t Ibid.

h Apollod. ibid. c. vii. . 5. Pausan. u Ibid,

ubi sup. x Ibid.

i Pausan. ibid. y Hyg. Fab. 155. Apoll. Bibl. 1. iii.

k Apollod. . 6. Pausan. ubi sup. c. 8. . 2. Pausan. in Arcad. c. 3.

1 Pausan. ibid. z Pausan. ibid. c. 4.

m Pausan. ibid. a Id. ibid.

n Pausan. ibid. lib. v. c. 3. b Ibid.

Pausan. ibid. Horn. II. ff. 623. c Pausan. in Arcad. c. 4.

P Pausan. ubi sup. Horn. II. &. d Ibid.

638. e Ibid.

Q Pausan. ubi sup. f Ibid.

r Apollod. lib. i. c. 7. . 6. g Id. c. 5. Horn. II. &. 609.

64 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X,

be in the same line of descent, at least seven generations.
In Laconia we find Lacedaemon, king of that country, was
son of Jupiter, and of Taygete daughter of Atlas h : Amyclas
the next king was his son 1 : Argalus succeeded his father
Amyclas k ; and Cynortas Argalus 1 ; and Cynortas left his
crown to CEbalus m : when CEbalus died, Hippocoon gat
possession of the throne, and for a time defeated Tyndareus
the son of CEbalus n ; but after some years Tyndareus ejected
him , and recovered the kingdom. Tyndareus had two
sons, Castor and Pollux P, but they both died before himq :
he married his daughter Helen to Menelaus the son of
Atreus r ; and at his death Menelaus succeeded him in his
kingdom 8 : and thus from Lacedsemon the son of Jupiter
to Helen and Menelaus, for whom the Greeks warred at
Troy, are eight reigns and seven descents ; or eight descents
from Jupiter. Again, Dardanus king of Troy was son of
Jupiter and Electra, daughter of Atlas 1 , Erichthonius of
Dardanus u , Tros of Erichthonius x , Ilus of TrosY, Laome-
don of Ilus z , Priamus of Laomedon a : Priamus was an old
man when the Greeks warred against him; his son Hector
was then in his full strength, and about the age of the Greek
commanders ; and from Jupiter to Hector are eight descents.
We might examine the accounts we have of other families,
and in all, of whom we have sufficient remains, we should
find Jupiter about eight or nine generations before the
Trojan war. Successions in families vary enough to cause
this difference of a descent or two, but we have no genea-
logies that will allow us to place him later than the times
of Moses; for Moses lived from A. M. 2433, to A, M.
: take the middle of his life A. M. 2493 > ^ rom thence

h Hygin. Fab. 155. Apollod. Bibl. r Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 9. . S.

1. iii. c. 10. . 3. Pausan. in Laconic. s Ibid. c. 10.

c. i. t Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. n. Diodor.

i Pausan. ibid. Sic. Hist. 1. v. c. 48. Horn. II. u'. 215.

k Id. ibid. u Diodor. 1. iv. c. 75. Horn. II. v'.

1 Id. ibid. 219.

m Id. ibid. x Diodor. ubi sup. Horn. II. i/. 230.

n Id. ibid. y Diodor. Horn. ibid.

Id. ibid. z lid. ibid.

P Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 9. . 7. a lid. ibid.

Q Id. c. 10. b See vol. ii. b. ix. Deut. xxxiv. 7.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 65

to the war at Troy are about 300 years, supposing Troy to
have been taken about A. M. 2796; and if we count eight
or nine descents in this space of time, we go between 30 and
40 years to a descent, and the generations we have ex-
amined being for the most part by the elder sons, this may
pretty well agree with the length of such generations in
these times.

As what I have offered does abundantly hint that Jupiter
lived about the age of Moses ; so the particulars of his
life do further confirm it, and may perhaps enable us to
settle more exactly the time when he flourished: for,
i. Jupiter visited Lycaon king of Arcadia d , and had a son
named Areas born of Callistho, Lycaon's daughter 6 . Now
Lycaon was contemporary, and of about the same years
with the elder Cecrops f . Cecrops reigned in Attica from
A. M. 2423 to A. M. 2473 . Lycaon was advanced to-
wards old age when Jupiter visited him, for his children
were all grown up, and of age to build cities and govern
nations 11 : Jupiter therefore visited him about the end of
the life of Cecrops, and not earlier than the 4Oth year of
Moses's age. But we may fix this matter with still greater
certainty: Lycaon died by the hand of Jupiter 1 ; at his
death Nyctimus his eldest son had his crown k : Nyctimus
was made king of Arcadia just upon the time of Deucalion's
flood 1 , and the ancients imagined that flood to have hap-
pened A. M. 2476; so that about this year Jupiter was in
Arcadia, namely, three years after the death of Cecrops,
and in the 43d year of Moses. Jupiter was undoubtedly of
years of wisdom, authority, and experience of the world,
when he transacted the affairs of Lycaon's kingdom ; and to
this agrees, 2. What we further find from the marble, that
Mars the son of Jupiter was tried at Athens for the death of
Halirrothius the son of Neptune, A. M. 2473"; so tnat

c See vol. ii. b. viii. h Vid. Pausan. in Arcad. c. 3.

d Hygin. Fab. 1 76. Apollodor. Bi- i Apollod. ubi sup.

blioth. 1. iii. c. 8. k Pausan. ubi sup. Apollod. Id.

e lid. ibid. Pausan. in Arcadic. l NUKT^OU 5e rr)v &a<Tt\fiav irapa\a-

c. 3, 4. &6vros 6 e-rrl Aeu/caAtWos /caTa

f Ao/ccD Se 70076 KeKpoTri -fj\iKlav T$ tyfVfro. Apollod. ubi sup.

fia.ffiXtvcra.v'Ti ' A-Bi^vaitav nal Av/caofi cfvai m Marmor. Arundell. Ep. iv.

TV aMiv. Pausan. in Arcad. c. 2. n Id. Ep. iii.

g See vol. ii. b. viii.

66 CONNECTION OF THE SACKED [fiOOK X,

before Jupiter's expedition to Arcadia, his sons were grown
up and engaged in the world. 3. Epaphus was son of Jupiter,
born of lo . Here indeed some of the genealogists make a
mistake ; for they suppose lo to be the daughter of Inachus :
this would argue Jupiter to have lived 300 years earlier
than the times we are treating of, for Inachus reigned at
Argos about A. M. 2i54 p . But Apollodorus has observed
and corrected this error: he remarks, that lo the mother
of Epaphus was not daughter of Inachus, but of Jasus^ :
Jasus, the father of lo, was son of Triopas king of Argos r ,
so that lo was Triopas's grand -daughter. Triopas was the
sixth king of Argos from Inachus 5 ; for Apis ought not to be
inserted amongst the Argive kings 1 ; and if we count the
number of years from the first year of Inachus to the last
year of Triopas, we shall find them to amount to 315";
compute then 315 years from A. M. 2154, the first year of
Inachus, and we come down to A. M. 2469, and in that
year Triopas died : if Triopas lived to see his grand-daughter
matched to Jupiter, as certainly he well might, then lo
might marry to him about seven or eight years before Ju-
piter's expedition into Arcadia ; or if she was not grown up
until some years after her grandfather's death, yet Jupiter's
acquaintance with her proves very well his living in these
times. 4. Minos is said to have been the son of Jupiter,
born of Europa daughter of Agenor x . This I am sensible is
a false account of Minos; and therefore though it might
easily be made to coincide with the times of Jupiter, as
Europa is generally said to have been the sister of Cad-
mus ; yet, as it would not be a true account of Minos's
ancestors, it would be trifling to offer any thing about it.
The Minos so much talked of amongst the Greeks was con-
temporary with Dredalusy, and Da3dalus was the son of
Eupalamus 2 , who had a daughter that was married to the

Hygin. Fab. 155. Apollod. 1. ii. u Vid. Castor, in Chron. Euseb. p.

c- i. -3- 27. ed. Seal. 1658.

P See vol. ii. b. vi. x Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. i. Hygin.

<1 Apollodor. Bib. 1. ii. c. i. Fab. 155.

r Pausan. in Corinthiac. c. 16. y Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 14. . 5.

s Castor, in Euseb. Chron. Diodor. Sic. 1. iv. c. 77.

* See vol. ii. b. viii. p. 418. z Apoll. ibid.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 67

second Cecrops% and his son Daedalus with Minos flou-
rished about the times of ^Egeus b , who reigned at Athens
from A. M. 2697 to A. M. 2745; so tnat ^ s Minos lived
about 150 years after Moses's death. The placing this Minos
about these times agrees perfectly well with the accounts
we have of his descendants down to the Trojan war; for
he was in the third generation before that expedition ; for
the sons of Minos were Deucalion and Molus, and their
sons Idomeneus and Meriones warred at Troy d . Sir John
Marsham very judiciously observes, from the hints of the
ancient writers, that there were two Minos's ; that the
former was the grandfather of the latter; that length of
time and the inaccuracy of writers had caused them to be
both taken for but one man, and that their genealogy
rightly stated would stand thus. Tectamus son of Dorus,
Asterius son of Tectamus, Minos of Asterius, Lycastus of
Minos, the second Minos of Lycastus, Deucalion of Minos,
Idomeneus of Deucalion 6 : this is the true account of this
family, and according to this account the first Minos stands
five generations before the Trojan war ; in the same line of
descent before Idomeneus who warred at Troy, as Tros
king of Troy does before Hector : and this agrees with
what is related of this Minos, that he stole Ganymedes
from Tros his father; for not Jupiter, but this Minos, was
anciently recorded to have committed that rape f . Further;
this time of Minos agrees to what the marble records, that
he reigned at Apollonia, A. M. 25738: Hellen, who was
father of Dorus h , and therefore grandfather of Tectamus the
progenitor of this family, was about Jupiter's age; for
Amphictyon, who was brother of Hellen 1 , succeeded Cra-
naus, and reigned at Athens in the year 2484 k , i. e. about

a Apoll. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 14. .5. e Marsham, Can. Chronic, p. 243.

b Apoll. ibid. ed. Lond. 1672.

c Cecrops began his reign in Attica f 'Ex*l*fvys yovv ev rots KpyTiKois, ov

A. M. 2423. See vol. ii. b. viii. rbv Aia <f>rj(rlv aprcurat rbv Fcwu/iiijSTjy,

Count the years of the several reigns of a\\a Mtv<aa. Athenseus Deipnosophist.

the Attic kings in Chronic. Euseb. 1. xiii. p. 601. ed. Lug. 1612.

down to J^gexiSj and ^Egeus's reign gMarmor.Arundell.Epoch.il.

will fall in the years I have allotted h Apollodor. Bibl. 1. i. c. 7.

to it. i Apollodor. ibid.

d Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 79. Homer. k See vol. ii. b. viii.
II. v. 245. /8'. 650.

VOL. II. F

68 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK X.

eight years after Jupiter's being in Arcadia: now count
down from Hellen to Idomeneus, who warred at Troy,
and we have Hellen, Dorus, Tectamus, Asterius, Minos,
Lycastus, Minos the second, Deucalion and Idomeneus,
that is, nine generations from Hellen who was contem-
porary with Jupiter to the Trojan war. We find a genera-
tion more in the families of Thoas and of Diomedes above-
mentioned, and a generation less in the family of Agas-
thenes. In the Arcadian roll of kings we have but seven
descents from Nyctimus to Agapenor ; but, agreeable to
this, in another line of Hellen's descendants we have ex-
actly seven down from Hellen to Glaucus, who exchanged
armour with Diomedes in the fields of Troy 1 , namely,
Hellen, JEolus, Sisyphus, Glaucus, Bellerophon, Hippo-
lochus, and Glaucus 01 , who commanded the Lycians n :
and thus, allowing the difference arising from descents hap-
pening by the elder or the younger children, the true ac-
count of Minos's genealogy synchronizes with the descents
in other families, and confirms the times of Jupiter agree-
ably to them. 5. Lacedeemon was son of Jupiter and Tay-
gete daughter of Atlas : according to the marble, Lacedee-
mon reigned at Laconia about A, M. 2489?. The marble
joins Eurotas and Laceda3tnon together ! ; but Eurotas was
really Lacedaemon's predecessor: whether the composer of
the marble Chronicon apprehended his epoch something too
early for the reign of Lacedsemon, and by joining Eurotas
with him, intended to hint that the year he fixed on fell in
Lacedsemon's, or at most in Eurotas's reign ; or whether
he imagined that Eurotas, at the time he mentions, took
Lacedsemon into partnership of his kingdom, I cannot say:
but take it either way, and the time of Lacedeemon's birth
must prove Jupiter to have lived in these times. If Lace-
daemon was taken partner with Eurotas in his kingdom
A. M. 2489, he might be a young man when thus ad-

1 Horn. II. " 235. p Marm. Arundell. ep. viii.

m ld. II. ead. 150 205. q 'A<f>' ov Evpdoras Kal AaKf5alfji<uy

n II. &. 876. AOKOJ/^TJS ifrurl\fvffcur try XKHJAJIF.

o Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 10. Hygin. faff^ovros 'AOnv&v 'twjmerfovos.

Fab. 155. Pausan. in Laconic, c. i. Manner, ibid.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 69

mitted to reign with him, perhaps not thirty, and so might
be born about A. M. 2460 ; and this year falls sixteen years
before Jupiter's expedition to Arcadia. If the epoch rather
belongs to Eurotas than to Laceda3mon's reign, Laceda3mon
still must have been born about the time above mentioned,
though he waited some years, and was of riper age, when
Eurotas left him his kingdom r . 6. Bacchus was son of
Jupiter arid of Semele, daughter of Cadmus 5 : now Cadmus
came to Thebes A. M. 2486 l : Cadmus did not marry Har-
inonia, the mother of Semele, until after he was settled
there u : Apollodorus suggests eight years to have passed
before he married x . Semele born of these parents could not
be grown up for Jupiter until above twenty years after :
suppose her twenty-one when Jupiter fell in love with her,
and we shall fix the time of this amour to about thirty
years after Cadmus came to Thebes, to A. M. 2516. Ju-
piter was now an old man ; for his son Mars was grown up,
and tried, as has been said, before the court of Areopagus,
forty-three years before this time : Jupiter therefore must
now have been above ninety, perhaps about ninety-five ;
an age, we may think, too advanced for so gay an amour.
But we must recollect the length of men's lives in these
ages, and consider that when Moses, who was Jupiter's con-
temporary, died at 120 years of age, he had not lived until
either his eye was dim, or his natural force abated^. And thus
we find reason to imagine Jupiter to have been about 95 years
old A. M. 2516, i. e. in the third year after the Israelites' exit
out of Egypt, and consequently that he was born about
A. M. 242 1 ; that he was about fifty-two when his son Mars
was tried at Athens ; about fifty-five when he made his expe-
dition into Arcadia ; about forty-eight when he courted the
mother of Epaphus ; and about thirty-eight when he ad-
dressed Taygete, of whom was born Lacedaemon : and these
particulars are all so probable in themselves, so consistent

, #re 8e, OVK ovruv a.vr$ t See vol. ii. b. viii.

iraiScav appevtav, /Scunteveiv KaTaXsiirfi u Diodor. Sic. 1. iv. c. 2.

A.aKfSatfj.ova. Pausan. in Lacon. c. i. * Apollod. Bibl. 1. iii. c. 4. . 2.

s Hygin. Fab. 155. Apollod. Bibl. 1. y Deut. xxxiv. 7.
iii. c. 4. . 2. Diodor. Sic. 1. iv. c. 2.

70 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

with one another, and supported by concurrent hints from
such different writers, that, instead of imagining a want of
proof of the times of Jupiter, we have rather reason to be
surprised that so many such reasonable and concurring inti-
mations can be picked up, to fix with any appearance of pro-
bability, the epoch of a man, whose whole life and actions
have been for ages disguised by an almost infinite heap of
fable blended with them, not to mention the defects of the
ancient profane history, and the thousands of years that are
between us and him.

I know of nothing that can be objected to the placing
Jupiter in this age, but some accounts we have in the my-
thological writers of persons said to be descended from him,
who lived ages later. Thus Jupiter is said to be the father
of Hercules, born of Alcmena wife of Amphitryon 2 ; of
Castor and Pollux, born of Leda wife of Tyndareus a ; of
Perseus, born of Danae daughter of Acrisius b ; of jEacus, the
father of Telamon and Peleus c ; of Arcesius, the ancestor of
Ulysses d ; and of many others : now if he really was the
father of any of these persons, he must have lived about
three generations only before the Trojan war : Perseus was
indeed about five descents before that expedition ; but the
other heroes I have named were grandfathers or contem-
poraries with the grandfathers or fathers of the warriors at
Troy. But let us observe, that the mythologists recorded
many of their heroes to be descended of the gods, though
other persons were their real parents : thus Autolycus was
said to be the son of Mercury, when in truth DaBdalion was
his father 6 ; and this happened either, i. when an hero
had borne the name of one who had lived ages before him :
in length of time the father of the former came to be re-
puted the father of the latter, both being taken for but one
and the same man. This was the case of Hercules : there
were two of that name, one indeed a son of Jupiter f : he

z Hyg. Fab. et al. d Ovid. ibid.

a Id. ibid. e A.vr6\vKos \ey6nevos S"Ep/j.ov TTCUS

b Id. ibid. e?i/oi, AatSoAiWos 8e &v rf a\7j0eT \6ycf .

c Apollod. 1. iii. c. n. .6. Ovid. Pausan. in Arcad. c. 4.

Metam. f Diodor. 1. v. c. 76.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

lived ages before the son of Alcmena? ; but the latter Her-
cules having copied after the illustrious actions of the
former, in length of time both were taken for one and the
same person, and the history and parentage of both ascribed
to him h ; and a fable was easily invented for the wife of
Amphitryon's being with child by Jupiter 1 . Or, 2. When
Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury, and the other persons ranked
with them, came to be deified, princes and rulers thought it
not only an honour, but good policy, and conducive to the
management of their affairs, to derive their pedigree from
some of them. Alexander the Great would have done it in
his day k , and reasons of state were his motives to it 1 ; and
Arrian thought him to have as good a title to it as the
more ancient heroes 1 ", and, if the matters were rightly
considered, not to be blamed for attempting it" : it raised
them high in the common estimation, and they were reputed
to have the greater influence, powers, and protection, the
greater the god was they could derive their descent from .
Thus Pausanias thought that he might assert, that the son of
Phoroneus would never have been esteemed equal to the son
of Niobe, upon a supposition that Jupiter was Niobe's son's
father p ; and this was Homer's reason for Asteropseus not
being able to cope with Achilles ; Asteropseus was said to
be the descendant of a river- god only, but Achilles's pedigree

g 'HpaK\fa IK Aibs yeveffOai -rra/j.- credant : fama enim bella constant, et

w6\\ois ereo'i wporepov rov yevm}9evros ssepe etiam, quod falso creditum est,

e| 'A.\Kfj.-f)vris. Diodor. 1. v. c. 76. veri vicem obtinuit. Curtius, 1. viii. .8.

h Tbv 5e ^ 'AA/tyiTJi/Tjs 'HpaK\ea irav- m Arrian. 1. vii. p. 504. ed. 1658.

rc\S>s vedorepov ovra, Kal gr)\(ar))v yev6- n "On 8e els Oebv r^v yeveaiv r^v

/JLCVOV TTJS rov ira.Xa.iov TrpocuptVcas, Sia avrov av4<pepev, ovSe rovro e/j,ol SoKel

ras avrks curias rvx^v re rrjs aOavcurias, elvcu irX-nn^4\t]fj.a^ el fjd) Kal <r6<pHr/u.a ^v

Kal xpdwv &m* vo V-* v<av -> 5'a T^IV 6/j.coyv- Tvy)*" rovs inr-r)K6ovs rov tre/ij/ou eVe/ca.

u.(o.v 86at rbv a.vr'ov eli/ot, Kal ras rov Arrian. ibid.

Trporepov irpdl-fis fls rovrov fjitraireffelv, o ^oAeTr^ rot 4pio~9eveos Kpo-

cvyvoovvruv ruv iro\XS>v r' a\-r)0S. Id. viwvos

ibid. IToto'tj' tyi^ffjievai, Hora/toW irep ^Kye-

i Vid. Apoll. Bibl. 1. ii. c. 4. . 8. yawn.

k Arrian. de Expedit. Alex. 1. iii. c. T< Kpetffffwv /wev Zevs Uora/j.u>v a\i/*v-

3. Plutarch, in Alexand. Quint. Curt. pyevruv,

1. v. Kpeto'ffwv 8' avre Aibs 76^6^, IIora/JLOio

1 Illud pene dignum risu fait, quod rcrvicrai.

Hermolaus postulat a me, ut aversarer Horn. II. <p'. 184.

Jovem, cujus oraculo agnoscor. Ob- P '7^ Se ef> olSa, us OVK ffj.f\\ev 6

tulit nomen filii mihi : recipere ipsis 7rcus avrf Niofiris iraiSl Iffa ofoco-dai, Aids

rebus quas agimus baud alienum fuit : re sivai SoKovvri. Pausan. in Corinth, c.

utinam Indi quoque Deum esse me 34.

72 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

was deduced from Jupiter ^ It is easy to imagine that
when these opinions were in repute, kings and governors
would be fond of ennobling themselves by the divinity of
their ancestors, and they might find it no hard matter to suc-
ceed in their claims, when their statesmen and officers in the
highest employments might think pretences of this sort,
how ill-grounded soever, yet capable of promoting the public
good, by the effect they might have upon both prince and
people 1 ": their vates or their oracles could secure them their
title 8 , or history and genealogies being but little known in
these times, it was easy to insert a god at the head of a
family, and there might be no necessity of going far back
to do it with security, and some families were so fortunate,
as to be divine this way by both parents ; Ulysses's descend-
ants shone with this double lustre*. Or, 3. The gods were
introduced into families to preserve their honour, to prevent
the infamy of their ancestors coming down to posterity.
Thus Tyro the daughter of Salmoneus had two children
before she married, namely, Pelias and Neleus, the father
of Nestor u : she loved to walk upon the banks of Enipeus x ;
but we are not told who the gallant was she so often met
there. When she came to be delivered, she took care to be
in private y, and got rid of the children in the best manner
she could 2 , and was afterwards reputably married 11 ; thus
she behaved in every step like a person sensible of having
exposed herself to infamy, but desirous to avoid it. Posterity
derived honour to her descendants from the accident : Nep-

Q Homer, ubi sup. rov Oeov TOV it/ AeX^ots
f Utile esse civitatibus, ut se viri &s Oebv TI/J.O.V 'Hpo/cAeo. Arrian. de Ex-
fortes, etiamsi falsum sit, ex Diis geni- pedit. Alex. 1. iv.

tos esse credant : ut eo modo animus t Nam mihi Laertes Pater est, Ar-

humanus, velut divinse stirpis fidu- cesiits illi,

ciam gerens, res magnas aggrediendas Jupiter huic

praesumat audacius, agat vehementius, Est quoqne per malrem Cyllenius

et ob hoc impleat ipsas securitate feli- addita nobis

cius. Varro in Fragment, p. 45, ed. Altera nobilitas : Dens eat in utro-

1619. Ae'761 ty Kctl vvv ovros 6 \6yos que parcnte. Ovid. Metam.

a\T)Qiq xpwjuci/os, us ftffwv &/ v6\euv /JL^ u Apollod. Bibl. 1. i. c. 9.

debs, a\\d ns ctpx^l Ovr^rbs, OVK etrri x Ibid.

KaK&v avTois ovSe ir6v(av avdtyevis. Plato y Tfvvhaaffa Kpvtya 5i8u/ious. Ibid.

de Legib. 1. iv. p. 830. edit. Ficin. 1602. z HaTSay e'/mflTjfnj/ Ibid.

s OuSe cbvTi 'HpaKAe? 6e?ai ri/mal eye- a Id. ibid.
VOVTO, ou5e Tf\fvr-fi(ravTi, irpocrQfv t) wpbs

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 73

tone was said to have been in love with her, and in the shape
of the river Enipeus to have been the father of her two chil-
dren 11 . Thus again, Danae, the daughter of Acrisius, played
the harlot with Prcetus c ; and her father, enraged at the dis-
honour done his family, would admit of no excuse for her
misbehaviour, but exposed at sea both her and the infant d :
in after -ages a fable was sufficient to clear her character :
Jupiter was said to have been the father of her child, and
to have wrought a miracle to gain access to her 6 . The
Greeks were not historians in the early times, and when
their poets and mythologists began to dip into the registries
of families, it would not have been borne to have had the
vices of the ancestors of the great brought into open view,
especially when writers of genius could readily, from the
theology then in vogue, and the fable of the age, find a re-
putable and secure cover for them : and one or other of
these reasons may evidently be assigned for the instances to
be met with of any of the reputed gods of the heathens
being engaged in gallantries with the ladies of later ages,
than about the times of Moses, and in particular for the
several pretences of Jupiter's having descendants later than
can be consistent with the time of life above supposed to
belong to him.

There is, I think, one instance, which should not be en-
tirely passed over without taking notice of it : it would
place Jupiter not later, but a great deal earlier than his
true age. Jupiter is said to have been the father of Argus
by Niobe daughter of Phoroneus f . This Argus succeeded
Phoroneus, and was king of ArgosS, and he began to reign
there no years after the first year of Inachus h , i.e. A.M.
3264', which are 169 years before the birth of Moses: so
that to suppose Jupiter to be the father of this Argus,
would be to place him above a century and half earlier than
the times we have contended for. I might observe, that

b Apollod. Bibl. 1. i. c. 9. g Apollod. Bibl. 1. ii. c. i. . 2.

c Id. 1. ii. c. 4. h Vid. Castor, in Euseb. Chronic.

d Ibid. i For the first year of Inachus's reign

' Ibid. was A. M. 2154. See vol. ii. b. vi.
f Hygin. Fab. 155.

74 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

the most exact writers took this account of Argus's descent
to be rather common opinion than real fact k : but there
were two Argus's, one a king of Argos, who reigned there
ages before Jupiter was born ; the other was surnamed Pan-
optes, and lived in Jupiter's times, and Juno is said to have
committed lo to his custody 1 ; but neither of them were de-
scended from Jupiter : the former Argus was the son of
Arestor ; and hence Ovid was probably led into a mistake,
to think Panoptes Argus, whom he calls Arestorides m , the
son of this parent. Arestor married Inachus's daughter ,
and by her had Argus, who, upon Phoroneus leaving no
son , succeeded to his kingdom. The latter Argus was
son of Agenor, the son?, or perhaps brother, of Jasus^ :
Jasus, as has been said, was father of lo, one of Jupiter's
concubines ; so that this Argus and Jupiter were indeed
contemporaries ; though Argus was not descended from
him. We must expect to meet some seeming contrarieties in
the genealogies of these times r : but whoever will search
may find such a concurrence in the accounts of so many dif-
ferent families, for the placing Jupiter where we have sup-
posed him, and the solution is so easy of most, if not of all,
that can be offered to contradict it, that if this of Argus, or
any other single instance, could not be clearly refuted, yet it
would not weigh against the number that agrees to it.

When Jupiter succeeded his father in his kingdom, he
found his people in some measure disposed for civil life.
Saturn had reduced them to some regularity, both of diet
and of manners 8 : rites of religious worship were instituted,
and rules thought of to promote the peace of society l . Care
had been taken to form their language and their senti-
ments 11 , and by these means a sense of duty to their gods,

k Vid. Pausan. in Corinth, c. 22. 34. utariv el<ri. Pausan. in Arcad. c. 53.
1 Apollod. ubi sup. s Tous Kaff eavrbv avOpdnrovs e| ayptov

m Ovid. Metam. 1. i. 624. Arestoridce Sia'iTijs els fiiov ^/xepoj/ fj.fraffTrja'ai. Dio-

servandam tradidit Argo. dor. Sic. 1. v. c. 66.

n Pausan. in Corinth, c. 16. * Mavrelas Kal Qvvtas Kal QevfLovs rovs

Id. c. 34. -rrepl TU>V 6ea>v ficrriyficraaOai, Kal ra irepl

P Apollod. Bibl. 1. ii. c. I. T^V cuvo^'iav Kal fip-fivyv KaraSe^ai. Id.

Q Pausan. in Corinth, c. 16. ibid.
r Oi fji^v Se 'E\\T)iswv \6yoi Sid^opoi u Acyiff/Jiovs evpe'iv, KOI ras rwv bvo-

ra ir\f(ova, Kal oi>x ^Kiffra firl rot's ye- /HOTWJ/ 0trets. Id. c. 67.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 75

and a good understanding, and spirit of justice and inte-
grity were promoted amongst them towards one another x ;
and all this Saturn had done, not by rigour of power and
compulsion, not by laws established with penal sanctions y,
without magistrates to enforce his dictates 2 , or to execute
vengeance upon, or restrain, offenders. He had trained them
to a simplicity of manners, and they were led, by the in-
fluence and authority of his direction only, to pursue and
practise what he dictated for the public good a ; and the
great peace and quiet, ease and content, in which they lived,
sensible of no wants but what they had a supply for, in-
duced posterity to call their times the golden age b . When
Jupiter became king, he brought in a new scene of life and
action : he taught his people to build houses ; to gather
corn, which till then had grown wild amongst the other
fruits of the earth d ; and to preserve and use it for food, and
afterwards to sow and reap it in its season e : he introduced
a sense of property, appointed magistrates to dispense justice,
and directed his subjects to bring their differences and dis-
putes before them, and to submit to their determinations f :
under his encouragement the arts of working divers sorts of
metals were attempted s, arms were invented for a soldiery,

x Elff^y^ffacrdai a-rrcun rfyre Si/coto- d Diod. 1. v. c. 66. In Saturn's days,

avvf}V) Kal T^V airX6ri]ra rrjs ^v^ris- Contenti cibis nullo cogente creatis,

Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 66. drbutcos foetus montanaque fraga

y Sponte sua sine lege ftdem rectum- legebant,

que colebat, Cornaque, et in duris heerentia

Poena metusque aberant ; nee vin- mora rubetis,

cla minantia ferro Et qua dedderant patula Jovis

&re ligabantur - arbor e glandes. ^ Ovid.

Ovid Metara e Kai r ^ v Karepyaffiav avrov [<rnrou].

turba timebat \^ Arivofrnu, Kal mlptw Kara.

a AtA rV i>Trep&o\))v T^S cfooplas, a5i- Obruta sunt. - Ovid.

KT)p.a niv /ir?5ei> gAcos virb yurjSei/bs vvvre- f npeDroi/ juei/ yap airavruv KaTa5e?|ot

Ae?(T0o<, iravras 5e TOVS virb rfy yywo- Vfp i rS)V aSt/c^oTcoj/ rb 8'iKaiou a\\-fi\ois

viav rovrov reray/j.ei'ovs fuucapiov &iov SiS6vai robs avOpATrovs, Kal rov fria, rl

tfipt&u*, Trdff-ns ftovris av^iroSt(Tr^ vparreiv OTTO (rrf) (rat, Kpiffet 5^ teal 5i-

airo\avovras. Diod. Sic. 1. v. c. 66. K affr-r)pic? ras afjuburp-nrfaeis 5ia\vw.

b Ovid. Metam. Hesiod. 'E^y. Kal Di o d. 1. v. c. 71.

'H^ep. Diodor. ubi sup. g A*y*W tlper^ ytvtaBai rrjs vepl

Twv oiKiuv Karao-Kevnv fiipfw. Diod. T ^ ff^poj, Raffias airaa-ns Kal rrjs Trepl

Turn primum subiere domos, do- rbv xa^Kbv Kal xP vff ^ v Ka ^ &pyvpov, Kal

mus antra fuerunt, rwv &\\(av '6<ra ryv /c rov irvpbs tpyaviav

Et densi frutices, et junctae cortice ^7rtS6X Tat - Diodor. 1. v. c. 74.
virgee. Ovid. Metam.

76 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

and men were trained and disciplined for war h : shooting
with the bow was much practised 1 , improvements were
made in navigation 1 *, and endeavours used for the taming
and managing of horses 1 : rules were agreed upon for the
nursing and educating of children" 1 , music and physic were
considerably advanced", and decent rites appointed for the
funerals of the dead : and thus, by a variety of useful de-
signs, he was adding strength and beauty, ornament and
politeness to his kingdom ; for the increase of which he in
the next place attempted a correspondence with foreign
states, and to this end assigned to one of his sons the office
of embassies, and made him his herald to proclaim peace or
war, and to conduct his treaties and alliances with the
neighbouring kingdoms P. These were the arts by which
Jupiter endeavoured to cultivate his people; though we
must not imagine that any of them were in his days carried
up to a perfection like what they were brought to in after-
ages, nor that so many and such divers designs could be at
once set on foot by him. The persons that are recorded to
have been assistant to him, and to have presided in their re-
spective provinces over the designs committed to their ma-
nagement, were Neptune and Pluto his brothers, Juno his
wife, Vesta and Ceres his sisters, Vulcan, Mars, Apollo,
Mercury, Venus, Diana, and Minerva, his children 1, and
afterwards Bacchus became the author of inventions, which
caused his name to be added to them r . Jupiter must have
been of years of maturity, before he could be ripe for the

h TlpS>TovKaTaffKeva(ranravoiT\iav,Ka\ Aeyerai ra -rrepl ras ra<pas Kal ras

ffrparuaras Ka&oirXiaai, Kal T)\V ev rats fK(f>opas Kal TI/JLO.S riav rcBi/fdoruv KOTaSe?-

(jidxais fvaydbtnoi/evepyeiaveiffTiyfi&aardai. |at, rbv irpb rov \p6vov, yu^Se/uias ovo"t)S

Diodor. 1. v. c. 74. e'Tn^eAetas -rrepl avrovs. Ibid.

i Evptrr)!' Se Kal rovrdov ytv6p.evov 5t- P Ttp Kal irpoffairrovffi ras ev ro7s iro-

Sa|at rovs yx&piovs ra vepl r}\v To|eiar. Ae/xots yivo^evas 4iriKT)pvKias Kal Sia\-

Id. ibid. c. 69. \ayas Kal cnrovSds. Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c.

k Upwrov xpVaerflai TCUS Kara 6d- 75.
\affffav epya<riais. Id. q Id. c. 69, 70, &c.

1 Tlpovainovffi Se avry Kal rb TOVS r Ai6vv(rovSe /J.v6o\oyovffiv evpfr^v ye-

'lirirovs 8a/ua(Tai irpuirov. Ibid. VGff&at TTJS a/j.Tre\ov Kal TTJS irepl TavTTjv

m EvpeTv TT\V TWV vqiritav ira&'uav Of pa- epyacrias, eri Se olvoirot'ias, Kal rovs TTO\-

irfiav. c. 73- \ovs T&V K T^S oTrcopos KapiTcav airoQi]-

n TTJS Kiddpas evper^i/ at>ayopevov<n, 0avpieiv, Kal ras xpei'as, Kal ras rpcxpas

Kal TTJS /car' avrrjv /j.ovcri.Kr)S' ert 5e rrjv Trapex f(T ^ at T0 ? s o.vdpu>irois eVi iro\vi>

larpiKTjv ^in(rrri(JiTf]v QsvtyKtlv. c. 74. \pbvov. Id. c. 75.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 77

forming such a kingdom as he projected, and consequently
his children must be grown up for the employments he
designed them; and we must imagine him not to have
assigned them their provinces, and consequently the arts,
which they were the directors of, not to have been remark-
ably advanced, until they were of age to cultivate and con-
duct them; and, if we examine, we may find that a due
time for all these particulars may be very well pointed out
in the term of Jupiter's life, as we have above settled it.
Pluto, one of Jupiter's brothers, was appointed not only to
direct what rites and ceremonies should be used at funerals,
but also to declare what honours should be paid to persons
deceased 8 , in order to convey their names, according to
their deserts, down to posterity. And as Jupiter took care
himself to settle the measure of his own fame*, and of the
illustrious" persons engaged with him in the execution of
his designs, as well as to determine what sort of honours
should be decreed to those who should come after them x ,
it might well happen that Jupiter and his associates should
come down to after-ages in a degree of honour higher than
what any that lived after them could attain to, or than what
would be given to any of his ancestors or other contempo-
raries, he having thus settled both his own and their fame
in such manner and measure, as he and the person under his
direction thought fit to record it. And from hence it might
happen, that when the ancient Greek heroes came to be re-
puted gods, twelve only attained the highest honours. They
had their one common altar at Athens ?, and it was usual
to swear by them z ; the Romans called them the Di
consentes*, which word is supposed to mean the same as
consentientes , and to intimate, that these gods consulted and
agreed together about what was to be done ; and so, as has

s A.fyeTai Tijiias ru>v reOi'ecbrwv Kara- 7 Hcpl rbv fiuiibv rwv SwScKo QfSov.

8e?cu. Diod. lib. v. c. 69. Plut. in Nicia, p. 531. ed. Xyl. 1624.

t Vid. Diodor. c. 69. z Ma TOWS SwSe/ca flcovs. Aristoph.

Eund. ibid. a Et quoniam (ut aiunt) Dei facien-

x T&J/ olv Ala, \fytrat, TO?S aplcrrois tes adjuvant, prius invocabo eos : nee

ruv TC flewi/ Kal rjpucav, en 5e avSpwv ras ut Homerus et Ennius, Musas, sed xii

aias a.irov ii^.a.i TJ/UOS, &c. Diodor. Deos consentes. Varro de Re Rustica,

c. 71. 1. i. c. i.

78 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

been hinted, the twelve Cretan worthies did about their
public institutions. The Cretan worthies above mentioned
were six men and six women, and thus the Di consentes were
generally distinguished, as Varro suggests to us b . Ennius
has put the names of the twelve Di consentes into the follow-
ing distich,

Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Jovis, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo.

And these are the very names of the twelve illustrious per-
sons, by whose joint endeavours the ancient Cretan polity
was formed. They were enrolled with and subordinate to
Jupiter their president, in the roll of fame, settled for him
and them in the age they lived in ; and hence it came to
pass, that when he in after-ages came to have divine ho-
nours paid to him, they also, next to him, were revered
above other deities.

We must not imagine that Jupiter found a ready and uni-
versal concurrence of all the Cretans to submit to his insti-
tutions : undoubtedly he met with many oppositions, though
in time he surmounted all: this, I think, we may well
imagine, from the character of his times handed down to
us. He was at the head of but the silver age d : the com-
motions that were in his days gave the poets a pretence to
paint in the best of colours the great peace of his father's
reign, when wars and fightings 6 were not heard of, and to
say of Jupiter's times, that the former days were better,
though they did not judge wisely concerning this matter *.
After-ages felt still greater troubles; so that Jupiter's times
were happier than what folio weds, though they were not
thought to be without alloy: the ancient writers hint to us,

b Eos urbanos, quorum imagines e In Saturn's reign,

d forum auratse slant, sex mares et Non tuba directi, non eeris cornua

foeminse totidem. Id. ibid. jlexi y

c For Juno is the person whom Dio- Non galece, non ensis erat, sine

dorus calls El\fi0via or Lucina. Et- rnilitis usu

XsiQviav Se Xafifiv rty irept ras Tj/crotJ- Mollia securce peragebant otia

a as tVt fj.f '\fiav. Diodor. c. 73. Juno gentes. Ovid. Metam.

Lucina, fer opem. Ter. in Andria, Act. f Eccles. vii. 10.

iii. Seen. i. g Though Jupiter's age was thought

d Sub Jove mundus erat, subiitque to be auro deterior, yet it was fulvo

argentea proles. Ovid. Metam. pretiofior are. Ovid, ubi sup.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 79

that many of the descendants of his ancestors lived under
his government, or were in alliance with him. The Curetes,
who were descended from his grandfather's brother 11 , lived
with their families irr his kingdom : their dwellings were in
the groves and shady valleys : they were shepherds and
managers of cattle' : he had part of his education among
them k , and we may suppose them well affected to him, and
ready to support him with all their influence and strength in
executing the designs, for which they in some measure had
perhaps formed him 1 . The Centimani lived, as I have ob-
served, in Tartarus" 1 : they were in alliance with Jupiter;
for he sent his captives in war to them, and they sent him
out " of their dominions such persons as he might want, or
could be of service to him. The Cyclopes were his artificers,
and made him armour, and instruments of war, for his sol-
diery . The only considerable families that opposed him
were the Titanes, who were brothers of his father Saturn P,
and their dependants, and the children of Ops, who were
the giants of their age and country ^r with the Titanes, we
are told, he had a ten years war r ; but that at length he
took them prisoners, and sent them to Tartarus s . Diodorus
Siculus gives an excellent character of these men*, and
Homer feigns them to have become the gods of the
country u into which they were thus sent as captives. Pau-
sanias indeed remarks, that Homer was the first that said
this of them x : but probably he might be led to it by some
opinion of their having been useful persons in the place they

h Diodor. 1. iii. c. 6r. n Apoll. 1. i. c. 2.

i Id. 1. v. c. 65. o Ibid.

k Id. c. 70. Apollod. Bibl. 1. i. c. i. P Diodor. 1. v. c. 66. Apoll. 1. i.

.3. q Apoll. 1. i. c. 6.

1 The pastoral life was in high r Apoll. 1. i. c. 2.

esteem in the early times, and it was s Ibid.

thought not foreign to the education t S> v e/ccwTTov rivSav evper^v yeveaQai

of a prince for him to be in some TO?S di/0pwirois, Kal 5to rjr cis airainas

measure acquainted with the arts of cvepyeffiav rvxriv np,S>v Kal (j.vf)/un]s aev-

it. Xenophon says, Uapair\^<na cpya vaov. Diodor. 1. v. c. 66.

elvai vofJiftas ayaQov KOI &a<ri\fcas ayaQov. u eous S' ovbu.t\aev airavras

roWe yap vop.4a. xpy vai > &*? ev8al/j.ova Tovs viroTapTapiovs,oiTiTT)Vs Ka\f-

ra KT"f)vn iroiovvTa xpyfrOo" avTois,r6vr ovrat. II. | / . 279.

jSatnAea uffafows ev8ai/j.ovas ir6\eis Kal x Tiravas Se irp&ros s volr)ffiv eoTrj-

avOpunrovs iroiovvra xP^aQu aw-roTs. yayfv <l OfjL-r)pos, deovs elvat <r<f>as uirb r$

Xenoph. de Institut. Cyri, 1. viii. Ka.Kovp.fvtf Taprdpcp. Pausan. in Arcad.

m Vid. quse sup. c. 37.

80 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

lived in, agreeable to what Diodorus afterwards thought of
them. When the Titanes were no longer able to head the
opposition, Jupiter soon composed matters with their chil-
dren : he married several of their daughters ; and their sons
removed out of Crete, and planted kingdoms in other
lands. With the giants Jupiter had several engagements :
these men would not be tied down to any social laws ;
they took for their subsistence what the earth afforded,
wherever they could find it; and the improvements made
in Jupiter's dominions invited them to frequent incursions,
to plunder the inhabitants. They would come under no di-
rection of Jupiter's appointments for the preservation of
property; but took away from those, who lived near their
dwellings, whatever they had a mind toY; so that there
could be no public safety, until a stop could be put to
this licentiousness, which in a little time was effected by
the deaths of these men, who were all slain by Jupiter and
his associates z .

When Jupiter had settled his affairs in Crete, he and his
worthies obtained themselves great fame in foreign lands :
Diodorus says, they travelled over almost all the world a ;
but their visiting the cities and states of Greece was enough
to cause this report of them: there were several kingdoms
growing up in these countries at this time ; but the political
arts were here but in their infancy, and so great a master of
them as Jupiter, from what has been said of him, must ap-
pear to have been, may very well be supposed to be capable
of instructing others in many points conducive to their
public welfare : he and his agents were at all times ready
to assist, with their persons or advice, any kingdom that
thought fit to apply to them, and they always acquitted
themselves so honourably, to the several states that had made
them application, and were so signally useful and beneficial
to them, that a great sense of the good they had done went
down to posterity ; and in after-ages, when they were deified,

y 2^/ioros inrepoxais Kal ^da/j.ais trfiroi- z Apollod. Biblioth. 1. i. c. 6.

Q6ras, KOToSovAoi/o-flat /j.fv 7rA.7j<rtoxwpous, a y Eire\6e?v rrjv oiKovfjifvrjv crx^v aira-

cnrtiBe'iv ftf rovSiKaiov Tt6(/j.fvois v6/j.ois. ffav. Diodor. 1. v. c. 71.
Diod. 1. v. c. 71.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 81

each city took for its tutelar divinity some one of these
Cretans, him or her, to whom their ancestors had been
obliged in this manner. And this is what Apollodorus sug-
gests to us : he says, the gods chose their cities, in which
each was to have their particular honours b ; and thus Mi-
nerva became the deity of the Athenians , Juno of Samos d ,
and others of them the gods of other cities. I would ob-
serve, that the time, which Apollodorus fixes for this choice
of their favourite cities, suits exactly with the age in which
we place Jupiter : he says it was in the days of Cecrops 6 ,
probably a little before his death, about A. M. 247 2 f .
Neptune and Minerva went at this time to Attica ; but they
differed when they came there in their advice to the Athe-
nians : Neptune thought their situation ought to direct
them to sea affairs ; Minerva was for having them lay the
foundation of their prosperity upon other arts. We are told
that Neptune and Minerva were so warm in this contest,
that Jupiter came over to decide its ; and that Minerva's
advice was at length agreed to be taken, and thus Athens
came to be reputed to be her city h . Mars at this time was
probably amongst other attendants upon Jupiter, as Halirro-
thius, the son of Neptune, might come with his father :
Agraulos, one of the daughters of Cecrops, was given to
Mars to be his wife, and Halirrothius attempted to force
her, upon which Mars killed him', and this was the crime
for which Mars was tried in the court of Areopagus A. M.
2473 k ; an d thus, as to time, the several hints we have of
the lives and actions of these men do perfectly well agree to
what is above fixed for the epoch of them.

About the year of the world 2476, Jupiter, as has been
before hinted, made an expedition into Arcadia : Lycaon
was king there, a prince of some fame, and surrounded with

b "E8o|e rots 0eo?s ir^Aets /caraAajSeV- f Cecrops died A. M. 2473. See vol.

6cu, fv als e/xeAAoi/ %etv n/j.as iSias ii. b. viii.
e/ca<rros. Apollod. 1. iii. c. 13. Apollod. ubi sup.

c Id. ibid. Plutarch. Sympos. 1. ix. h Id. ibid.

Qu. 6. i Id. ibid.

d Plutarch, ibid. k Id. ibid. Harm. Arundell. Ep. iii.

e Apoll. ubi sup. See vol. ii. b. viii.

8 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

a numerous offspring 1 , but of most savage manners : he shed
human blood at his sacrifices" 1 . He received Jupiter with an
appearance of hospitality, but at the entertainment the body
of a child was served up to the table 11 : Jupiter, moved at
the sight of such a preparation, with the help of his attend-
ants attacked Lycaon . Lycaon is said to have been turned
into a wolfP; and some learned writers have imagined that
a frantic madness seized him, and that he died of a dis-
temper that might countenance this fiction 1 : I should rather
think that he fell by the hand of Jupiter 1 ", and that the
fable of his being turned into a wolf was invented ages after
his death. By an hint we have in Pausanias, it looks as
if the Arcadians did not leave off their barbarous custom
of eating human flesh at the death of Lycaon ; for he tells
us of a man, some years after Lycaon, who was turned into
a wolf for ten years, upon his partaking of a banquet of
human flesh ; and adds, that if in that ten years he had not
entirely abstained from such food, he must have continued a
wolf all his life after 8 . Plato treats the representation of this
person being turned into a wolf as a fable, and moralizes it
to express his having been a tyrant, such an one being
indeed as a wolf to his people 1 . In length of time the Ar-
cadians extinguished from amongst their people the savage
appetite above mentioned ; and perhaps the method by which
they reformed them was by an annual commemoration of
the benefits they had received from the hands of Jupiter.
In after-ages they erected an altar to him by the name of
Lycaeus, and instituted the Lupercalia to his honour ; and
when they performed the services appointed at this solemn-
ity, perhaps the barbarities of Lycaon, and of some other
person, who was afterwards for ten years not unlike him,
might be recited to the people in such a manner, as to oc-

1 Pausan. in Arcadicis. Apollod. Bibl. lord bishop of Durham, in his most

1. Hi. c. S. excellent Vindication of his Defence of

m lid. ibid. Christianity, p. 25.

n Pausan. in Arcad. Apol. ibid. r Vid. Apollod.

o Apollod. ubi sup. s Pausan. in Arcadicis, c. 2.

p Pausan. ubi sup. t Plato de Repub. 1. viii. p. 724. ed.

Q The learned writers who were of Francof. 1602.
this opinion are cited by the present

AKD PROFANE HISTORY. 83

casion the fable that was told afterwards of both of them.
Pausanias, as well as Apollodorus, imagined Jupiter to have
really been a deity at the time of these transactions" : Pau-
sanias supposes Lycaon himself to have at this time been a
worshipper of Jupiter; that he had dedicated the altar, and
instituted the Lupercalia x t but the marble suggests a more
probable time for the rise both of the games and altar ;
namely, in the reign of Pandion the son of the second Ce*
crops, who was king of Athens above 200 years after the
times of Lycaon y. Pausanias and Apollodorus had neither
of them formed a true judgment of the progress of the hea-
then idolatries, nor were they apprised that the Greeks
did not worship hero-gods in these ages ; but that the
elements and lights of heaven were at this time the objects
of their devotion 2 . Jupiter himself paid his worship to these
gods : he offered his sacrifices to the sun, to the heaven, and
to the earth a ; so that it must be impossible) that, whilst Ju-
piter was alive, and known to be but a mortal man, and was
himself a worshipper of divinities of a superior nature, any
king or people whatever could imagine him a god, and erect
altars and offer sacrifices to him. We cannot at this distance
of time form any certain judgment of the then state of the
Arcadians : but from the stay Jupiter made in this country,
from the appearing good understanding between him and
Lycaon's children, and from the honour which the Arca-
dians paid to his memory in after-ages, we may justly ima-
gine, that Lycaon's cruelties had made both his children
and subjects weary of him; that they were all ripe for a
revolt, and that Jupiter found it no hard matter to deliver
his subjects out of his hand, and to settle their affairs to
their universal satisfaction. Apollodorus indeed reports all
the sons of Lycaon, except Nyctimus, to have been killed
by Jupiter b ; but from Pausanias this appears not to have

Pausan. in Arcadic. Apollod. Bibl. T&apfrapwv, tfXiov, KOI ffe\-f)vr}v, Kal yyv,

1. iii. c. 8. Kal aa-rpa, Kal ovpavov. Plat, in Cratylo.

x Ibid. a npb 8e rrjs p.dx.'ns irpbs TOVS yiyavTas

Y Marmor. Arundell. Ep. xviii. TOVS 4v Kp^rrj, \eyerai rbv Ala 6v(rat

z fplvorroi p.ev of irpunoi TWV avOp<a- T)\i<p Kal ovpavy Kal yfj. Diodor. L v* C;

irtav TTfpl T}\V 'EAAc&a TOVTOVS /J.6vovs fl.

Ofovs ijye'io-Oai, Sicnrep vvv TroAAol TWV b Apollod. ubi sup.

VOL. ii. a

84 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

been fact; for after Lycaon's death they separated into
divers parts of the country, and built each his city, except
GEnotrus, who went away with a colony into Italy . Nyc-
timus succeeded Lycaon in his kingdom d , and Jupiter
stayed some time with him, and probably assisted him in the
settling his affairs, and during his stay courted Callistho,
sister of Nyctimus e , of whom was born Areas, who, at the
death of Nyctimus, was made king of Arcadia f .

Jupiter and his whole family were at Thebes in Boeotia
at the wedding of Cadmus s. Jupiter then gave Harmonia
to Cadmus to be his wife ; for Harmonia was not the
daughter of Mars and Venus, as many of the ancient writers
suggest 11 ; but the daughter of Jupiter and sister of Darda-
nus 1 . Cadmus married about eight years after he came to
Thebes k ; so that his wedding was celebrated about A.M.
2494, and in this year therefore Jupiter and his Cretan
worthies made him this visit. About one or two and twenty
years after, when Semele, who was born of this marriage,
was grown up, Jupiter came to Thebes again, and grew
enamoured of Semele : the mythologists say of Semele, that
she wished to find Jupiter's embraces such as Juno had
experienced them 1 : Semele was very young when Jupiter
addressed her ; but Jupiter was above ninety years old m :
Semele might not be fond of the disparity of his years ;
but would have liked him better if he had been no older
than when he married Juno : however, she was with child
by him, and probably died of hard labour at the birth of
Bacchus ; and her being thus lost, and the child preserved,
added to some such story, as I have suggested, about the
difference between her age and Jupiter's, was ground
enough for the mythologists to invent all they offer about
the death of Semele and the birth of the Grecian Bacchus n .

c Pausan. in Arcad. * Vid. ApoUod. 1. iii. c. 4.

d Ibid. 1 Vid. Diodor. Sic. 1. iii. c. 64.

e Ibid. Qualem Saturnia, dixit,

f Pausan. et ApoUod. Te solet amplecti, Generis cum

S Apollod. 1. iii. c. 4. foedus initis,

h Apollod. 1. iii. c. 4. . 2. Pausan. Damihi te talem Ovid. Met.

in Boeotic. c. 5. Hygin. Fab. 148. mVid. qua; sup.

i Vid. Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 48. n Diodor. ubi sup. Ovid. Metam.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 85

We are not told how long Jupiter lived, nor who suc-
ceeded him in his Cretan dominions; and I am apt to ima-
gine that when he died, no one person became king of the
whole island. The brazen age came next after the silver times
of Jupiter ; an age of great wars and commotions in the
then known world p . Colonies about this time marched
from many countries to find settlements ; and Crete seems
to have been invaded by some of themq, and not to have
been united again under one head until the days of Minos r :
and the unsettled state the island might come into by this
new scene, might occasion a failure of its history as to the
deaths of Jupiter, and the illustrious persons who had acted
with him ; though the records of their great exploits settled
before their deaths might come down to all posterity. After-
ages took Jupiter for a god, nay, for the supreme God of
both heaven and earth 8 ; and when these notions of him
took place, whatever memoirs there might have been found
of his having once been a mere man, would of course be dis-
regarded, and in time lost. The Cretans pretended, that they
had in their country the tomb of Jupiter 1 ; but Callimachus
thought the divinity of Jupiter to be a sufficient confutation
of all they had to offer about it : he says,

Kprjres det i/revorcu' /cat yap TAtyov, a> ava, creto
TKTYjvavTo' (TV 8' ov Odves, ccTcrl yap

Whether the Cretans had really such a monument as was
pretended, or whether what the Scholiast writes was the
fact, we cannot say: the Scholiast upon Callimachus re-
marks, that the inscription of the monument was originally
MIN12O2 TOT AIOS TA<K)2, i. e. The tomb of Minos son of
Jupiter; that length of time had worn out the word MI-
N12O2, so that the remaining part was only TOT AIO2
TA<O2, or what we in English should render, The tomb of
Jupiter, and that the unobserving reader, not taking notice
of the word which time had defaced, took it for Jupiter's

o Hesiod. "Ep7. KO.\ 'H/ncp. lib. i. t Cretensem, Saturni filium, cujus

p Ibid. in ilia insula sepulchrum ostenditur.

Q Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. So. Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1. iii. c. 21.
r Ibid. u Callimach. Hymn. i. in Jovem,

s Vid. Hesiod. Homer, et al. v. 8.

G 2

86 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

sepulchre, when it was only Minos's, who had the honour
to be thought to be descended from him x .

If we consider Jupiter's politics, we must allow him to
have been a man of as great natural wisdom and sagacity,
as perhaps any age ever produced : his father Saturn had
taken some steps towards civilizing the people : in Saturn's
days, the forming a language and introducing a method of
reasoning was made a science y, and undoubtedly a rational
foundation might be thus laid for government and society:
good maxims 2 might be agreed upon for a right way of
thinking; or, in other words, good principles instilled, and
an uninformed populace led insensibly to sentiments condu-
cive to peace and good order : but all the happiness that
might this way be promoted, would not, without further
methods to establish and support it, have been either of a
large extent or a long continuance. When Saturn opened
to his people the prospects of the golden age, the scene was
new, and it was a scene of plenty without trouble, and I
can apprehend no great difficulty there could be, to lead
men to like it ; he reduced them from a savage to an hu-
man diet a ,

Sylvestres homines

Caedibus et foedo victu deterruit b .

He persuaded them not to eat and devour one another ; but
to live in peace and security, and enjoy the plenty, which,
from the living creatures , and the natural fruits of the
earth, their island would afford in abundance for all of them :
but this happiness must have had an end. As their num-

x Vid. Marsham. Can. Chronic, p. At vetus ilia cetas, cui fecimus

243. Lond. 1672. aurea nomen,

y *ocri MviHJLOfffaiv \oytfffjiobs efyeli/, Fastibus arboreis, et quas humus

Kal Tas TU>V ovofJLaruv OeVeis fadffrip rS>v educat herbis

tvruv rdtat. Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 67. Fortunata fuit, nee polluit ora

, * t - / , / cruore. Metam.

A < W flMTM wtrfrtu aal. that tw t

Anstot. Analyt. post. true of ^ ^ gaturn ; ^ hea .

a Ai>epuTrovs QaypiovSiaiTTris eis frov then writers found memoirs of men's

il^pov ^eroo-T^o-oi. Diodor. c. 66. having anciently lived on a vegetable

t> Horat. de lib. Arte Poetic. diet, and for want of true history they

c The poets imagine that men eat affirmed of many subsequent ages,

no flesh in their golden age. Thus wn at perhaps was fact only until the

Ovid, days of Noah.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 87

bers increased, their flocks and herds not duly managed
would have failed ; the natural produce of the isle, not im-
proved by tillage, would have been eat up, and the land
in time would not have been sufficient to bear them. This
was what Jupiter had to provide against, and in order to it
he settled property, introduced arts, brought his people to
be willing to quit the ease and inactivity of Saturn's
halcyon- days, and to engage in a variety of cares and la-
bours each in his own province, that improvements might
be made, a plenty produced of all the conveniences of life,
and a due course settled for their circulating in a proper
method to all sorts and ranks of men ; and this was a scene
of life, which, though reason would clearly point to, yet
argument alone would not have been able to maintain
against opposers. We find, that, when the limitations of
property were introduced into society, the a<re/3eis and the
Arycrrat d , men, that would not be tied down to them, ap-
peared in every country: these men would have argued
themselves to have had natural rights to the common life,
and all Saturn's art of reasoning and persuading might not
have prevailed upon them to depart from it. But Jupiter
had a genius for business as well as for speculation, and
knew how both to project what was proper to be agreed
upon, and to give his schemes a full effect amongst the
people ; and in order hereto, i . He married the lady, who
had the province of forming the reasonings of the Cretans 6 ;
and this undoubtedly was a wise step ; for hereby he se-
cured himself, that nothing should proceed from her art to
oppose or contradict him ; rather he became able to dispose
all her influence and art to promote the purposes which he
intended. 3. In the next place he gathered a soldiery, and
disciplined them for war f . He provided himself a power,
to give weight to his directions, to protect all that would
come into them, and to discourage and suppress those that
might oppose him. But, 3. he did not exercise this power
so as to render himself odious, but rather he gained the

d Diodor. Sic. 1. v. 1. i. c. 3. Hesiod. Otoyov.

e Diodor. 1. v. c. 68. Apollod. Bibl. f Diodor. c. 74.

88 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

affections of his people by his use of it: he appointed
magistrates, and communicated a share of his authority,
and this in a manner so popular, that though he was the
first that appears in this country to have had any true power
to govern, yet he obtained the character of an opposer of
tyranny, and was thought not to advance the prerogative of
kings, but to be a promoter of the liberties of the people 1 ".
4. Jupiter appointed his wife Juno and his children to teach
the several arts and sciences that were necessary for the im-
provement of his people; and Diodorus Siculus has re-
counted to us the several provinces that belonged to each
of thems. 5. His brother Neptune had the care of his
navy h . 6. Pluto had the province of determining what cere-
monies should be used at funerals, what honours should be
decreed to dead persons, who had deserved well of the pub-
lic 1 ; so that hereby all were excited to endeavour to pro-
mote the public welfare, and by rewards of the greatest
influence over the most active spirits 11 , and the most likely
to raise an emulation to support the government 1 , rather
than to be a means to enable any to weaken and under-
mine it. 7. He diligently watched over and severely pu-
nished every attempt that might be made by any private
man, to disengage his people from a strict adherence to the
public institutions, and therefore made an example of the
unhappy Prometheus, who ventured to teach men the arts
he was master of, without having obtained a public appoint-
ment for his teaching them.

I am sensible that the mythologists have so disguised the
story of Prometheus, by their manner of telling it, that it
may be thought impossible to ascertain what was in fact
either his crime or his punishment. But let us examine, and

dvfwrwv KaTa5eI|at. Ibid. Tbv oSi/ Ato

xcSbv aira(ravl<T6rt]ra Kal rfyv 8r)iMKpa- \eyovffi /J.)] fj.6vov apSrjv ^| avBpdirow aipa-

rtav lo"n*yov(j.vov . Diodor. 1. v. c. 7 1 vlffou rovs acre/Sets Kal irovi)povs t aAAa Kal

Kp6vov Se yev6fj.fvovvlbv Atarbv evavrlov rots aplarois rS>v avSpuv ras a|tas diro-

T< irarpl )8ioi/ frXaxrai, Kal irapexfawov ve'i/J-ai ri/j.ds. 0.71.

eavrbv iraffiv firieiKrj Kal (piXavOpwirov, k of (J.V of>i/iro\\ol avSpo7ro5e;Sets <pat-

&c. Diodor. 1. iii. c. 6l. vovrai jSotr/crjyu.aTcoj' &iov irpoaipov/uievoi.

S Diodor. 1. v. of 5e x a P /LJ/Tes Ka ^ irpo-KTiKol TI^V,

b Ibid. c. 69. Aristot. de Morib. 1. i. c. 3.

i Tbv Se "ASrji/ Ae'-yerai ri/mas rut/ TC- 1 Vid. Polyb. Hist. 1. vi. c. 4.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 89

then judge of what they say about it. Hyginus relates,
that before Prometheus, men were wont to ask for fire
from heaven, and did not know how to keep it from going
out when they had it ; that Prometheus brought it down to
the earth on a ferula, and taught men to preserve it in
ashes; that Mercury hereupon at the command of Jupiter
nailed him down to Caucasus, and set an eagle to eat his
heart, which grew by night as the eagle eat it by day ; that
after thirty years n Hercules killed the eagle, and set Pro-
metheus at liberty. Thus Hyginus relates the fable of Pro-
metheus : he has enlarged it, in some circumstances, in his
astronomy P. According to this account, the teaching men
how to kindle fire seems to have been what Prometheus was
famous for, and this opinion may seem to be countenanced
by an hint of Diodorus Siculus^ ; by the account we have in
Pausanias of an altar erected in the academy at Athens'";
and by what Plato said of Prometheus 8 . But I cannot think
this was the fact ; for, i . The ancient Greek mythologists,
and those who copied from them, tell the story quite an-
other way 4 : their accounts are, that he made men, and ani-
mated them with fire. 2. The supposed fact, upon which
Hyginus's fable depends, was not true, for it was not Pro-
metheus, but Phoroneus, who first taught the Greeks to
kindle fire u . 3. The altar at Athens, mentioned by Pausa-
nias, was either of no note, very modern, or more probably
what was said of it in Pausanias's time relating to Prome-
theus was not true; for Lucian is express, that Prome-

ro The commentators upon the P Poetic. Astronom. c. xv.
Greek poets seem to have thought the <1 Tlpbs aK^iav 8' evper^v

vdpOrj^ or ferula, a sort of tinder-box, rS>v irvpelwv, 4 3>v ^KKaierai rb irvp.

iffri ya,p irvpbs ovrus <pv\aKTii<bs 6 vdp- Diodor. Sic. 1. v. c. 67.
^l> ^Tfioof X WV fJ.a.\a.KOTT]Ta. Kal rpeQeiv r 'Ej/'A/caSTj/u/ot Seetrri Upop^Qeus a>-

rb Tvp } Kal /*)) atroff^vvvvai Swapem)?. fibs, Kal Qeoitfftv air' avrov irpbs T$IV ir6\iv

Procl. ad Hesiod. *Epy, Kal 'H/j.fp. and fx VTfS Ka.ioii.4vas \a/j.ird8as. rb Se ayta-

perhaps Hyginus was of this opinion, viv^a, 6/j.ov ry 8p6/jLcp <pv\dcu r^y SaSa

He says, that Prometheus, after he had ITI Kaiopfvyv fffrlv. Pausan. in Attic,

got the fire, Itetus volare non currere c. 30.

videretur, ferulam jactans ne spiritus s Ilvp /xei/ -irapa TIpop-nQeus. Plato in

interclusus vaporis extlngueret in an- Politic, p. 539. ed. Francof. 1602.
gustia lumen. Poetic. Astronom. c. xv. t Apollodor. 1. i. c. 7. Fulgentii My-

n In another place he says 30000 thol. 1. ii. c. 9. Tatian. Orat. ad Grsec.

years. Astronom. c. xv. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1. v.

Hyg. Fab. 144. u Pausan. in Corinthiac.

90 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

theus never had temple or altar any where dedicated to
him x . 4. What Plato says of Prometheus's giving men
fire, was not meant in the literal sense; but in allusion to
the Greek fable of his having made men 7. 5. If his teaching
men how to kindle fire had been the fact committed by
him, how could this have deserved punishment ? Lucian's
ridicule of this notion is sufficient to induce any one to
think, that the ancients could never have imagined a man
condemned for an invention of such use and service to man-
kind. And for these reasons I should think, that this ac-
count of Hyginus was not the true ancient mythos about
Prometheus ; but rather an opinion of some later fabulists,
who thought they could this way find an easier solution of
what was said about him. The soul of man was thought
by philosophers more ancient than the Stoics to consist of
fire : it was an ancient opinion, that the Hebrew word [aish]
for man, was derived from aesh, which in that language
signifies f,re z ; and very probably the philosophy of the
times, in which what is said of Prometheus was first re-
corded, led those, who framed the mythos of him, to say he
gave fire to his men; but not in that low and vulgar sense
in which some writers of later ages imagined*. But let us
see what the Greek writers say of him. They tell us, that
having made men of water and earth, he gave them fire,
without Jupiter's knowledge; that Jupiter for this fact or-
dered Vulcan to nail him down upon mount Caucasus,
where an eagle for many years preyed upon his liver, until
at length Hercules delivered him b . This is their account of
him: let us now examine what they could design to inti-
mate by it. Lucian indeed tells us that the Athenians
called the potters, who made earthen vessels, and hardened
them with fire, Prometheus's ; but then he owns them to
be the wits that talked thus d ; and this is indeed making g,

x Vid. Lucian, in Prometheo. gnitio nomen eorum ad errorem fabulae

y Vid. Platon. Protag. p. 224. ed. traduxisset, Cic. Tusc. Disput. 1. v. c. 3,

Francof. 1602. b Apollod. Bibl. 1. i. c. 7.

z Euseb. Prsep. Evang. 1. xi. c. 6. c Lucian. in Prometheo.

a Nee vero Atlas sustinere coelum, d They were the jesters upon Prome-

nee Prometheus affixus Caucaso theus's materials, the tiriffKcaTTTovTes &

traderetur, nisi coelestium divina co- rbv irt}\'bv ) KCU rV & 7p} oirr^<nv. Ibid,

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 91

jest of, but not explaining, the ancient fables. The philoso-
phers treated these matters in a more serious way 6 : we have
in Eusebius what one of them would have said upon the
subject f : Prometheus, he says, was fabulously reported to
have made men, because, being a wise man, he reformed by
his instructions men who were in a state of the grossest ig-
norance : and Plato tells us what the fire was which he stole
and added to them ; namely, the arts which Vulcan and
Minerva taught the peoples. Science is the fire, the life of
man, though none but God did ever form man of the dust
of the earth, and breathed into him the breath of life, so as to
cause man to become a living soul h ; yet, what is said of Pro-
metheus, taking it in the sense we have now offered, is not
inelegant ; though fables and similitudes are not to be too
strictly taken ; nor can instructing men be absolutely said to
be making and giving life to them. And now we may see
how Prometheus offended Jupiter, and why Jupiter put a
stop to him : Jupiter had appointed proper persons to in-
struct his Cretans, and, agreeably to what was the sense of
Joshua, who attended upon Moses 1 , he thought it politi-
cally unsafe to permit any to be their teachers, but those
who derived their authority from him; and therefore Pro-
metheus, who had no such authority, was treated by him as
a corrupter and seducer of the people. It is not so easy to
say what the punishment was which Jupiter inflicted on
him: what is told of the eagle preying upon his heart or
liver is indeed a mere fable, and we have hints that lead
to the rise of it : Herodotus remarks, that the Greeks had
the names of almost all their gods out of Egypt k ; and Dio-
dorus observes, that there had been men in Egypt of all the
several names which the illustrious Greeks were afterwards
distinguished by ; Sol, Saturn, Rhea, Jupiter, Juno Vulcanus,

e Vid. Platon. in Protag. Cic. ubi sup. rriv, [npoju^fcvs] \a6uv faepxrrcu, /coi

f TIpofiriQevs 8s irK&rreiv avQp&trovs K\tyas r-fjvre tp,irvpov rexvi\v rriv rov

ipvOevero- <ro(f>bsybp &v els -rraiSfiav av- 'H(pat<Trov, /col rriv &\\i)V rty TTJS 'A0rj-

rovs cbrb TT)S &yav iSiwrelas fj.ereirXa.rrev. vus, SiSaxriv avQpwirfp. Plat, in Protag,

Euseb. in Can. Chronic, an. 332. p. 224. ed. Francof. 1602.
_ K "AvQponros aofyiav r^v iro\iriK$)V OVK h Gen. ii. 7.

e?Xfv *s 8e rb rr]s 'Adrjvas Kal 'H^at- i Num. xi. 28.

PTOV ofrcTj/ua rb KOIV^V Iv $ ^t\orx v ^" k Herod. 1. ii. c. 50,

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED

[BOOK x.

Vesta, and Mercurius, were names that had been given
to famous Egyptians 1 , and thus the Egyptians had their
Prometheus m , and he was one of their kings" : in his time
the river Nile was called the Eagle ; and great inundations
happened in his reign from the overflowing of the river,
and the concern he had for his country threw him into the
deepest melancholy p . But Hercules, an Egyptian so called;
(for there were three Hercules's, and the first and most an-
cient was an Egyptian q;) Hercules, I say, embanked the
river, retrieved the country, and hereby 1 relieved the king
from the grief and concern that preyed upon him ; and, from
what was mentioned in the Egyptian records of this fact,
the Greek fabulists took occasion to say that an eagle
preyed upon the heart or liver of Prometheus, until Her-
cules delivered him 5 . And thus this part of the mythos was
not originally intended of the Greek Prometheus ; nor does
it at all belong to him. However, he was bound down to
mount Caucasus : I imagine Jupiter banished him to some
uncultivated mountain called by that name 4 , where he was

1 Diod. Sic. 1. i. c. n. We must not
understand either Herodotus to mean
that the Greeks took the Egyptians'
words for the names of their gods, or
Diodorus, that the Egyptians had called
their heroes by the Greek names : the
fact was this : the Greeks formed names
for their gods and heroes of the same
import in their language, as the Egyp-
tian names were in the Egyptian; as
homo, the Latin word for man, expresses
in Latin what Adam, the Hebrew word,
does in Hebrew, both being of a like
analogy to the word, which in each lan-
guage signifies the ground; and this is
what Herodotus and Diodorus intended
of the Greek and Egyptian names ; viz.
that, as Diodorus expresses it, fj,eQep-
/j.riVvo/j.V(t)V avrwv 6/j.Q)vv/j.ovs vi
they were analogous to one another.

m Diodor. ibid.

n Diodor. ibid.

o Atet T^JV o^vr'nra Kal T^JV ftiav rov
KarevexOevros pev/uiaTos, rbv /J.GV irora^bv
'Aerbv ovo/j.a(rdT)vai. Diodor. 1. i. c. 19.

P Thy Sf Tlpofji-ndfa, Sta r^jv Xinriiv KIV-
Svvtveiv, e/c\J7retV rbv &tov fKovffitas. Id.
ibid.

q Diodor. 1. iii. c. 73.

r Lib. i. c. 19.

s Aib Kal rwv Trap'' "EAATj<n
rivas els pvOov ajar/civ rb trpax^v, us
'NpaK\eovs Tbv aerbv avrjprjKOTOS rbv rb
rov Tlpof^tjOeus ?fjrap evOiovra. Diodor.
0.19.

t The mountain Caucasus is ge-
nerally placed by geographers between
the Euxine and Caspian seas: Apol-
lodorus calls it a mountain of Scythia j
but we cannot conceive Jupiter should
dispatch Prometheus to such a distance
from Crete : I should rather think some
mountain of Crete was called by this
name. As in after-ages very distant
nations received the names of their de-
ities from this island, so they might the
names of mountains, cities, and rivers
also. We find the fable of Prometheus
travelled all the world over. In Alex-
ander's time, mount Caucasus, the scene
of his war, was said to be in India ; (see
Strabo, 1. xv. p. 688. ed. Par. 1620.)
as before it had been placed in Asia.
The fable of one age perhaps removed
it from Crete into Pontus ; a still later,
with as much truth, might carry it
thence into India.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 93

obliged to confine himself to live, until after some years
Jupiter recalled him again u .

The hints we have in the ancient writers are too short
to enable us to pretend to give a large account of the respec-
tive lives of the several persons that engaged with Jupiter in
the scenes of action, that made him and them conspicuous
to the age they lived in, and created them that fame which
has come down to all posterity. Fable has told us many par-
ticulars of all of them ; but a deal of this may be set aside,
by considering what can and what cannot belong to the age
they lived in. I imagine they did not all settle in Crete
for their whole lives. Apollo was a great traveller, he vi-
sited divers parts of Greece, endeavouring to form all he
conversed with to an orderly and social life x . Whether he
began his travels before or at the death of Jupiter, I cannot
determine : he came to Athens y, went thence to Panopaeus,
a city of Phocis 2 , where he killed Tityus, a man of huge
stature and strength 3 , and who oppressed and domineered
over that neighbourhood 13 . From hence he went to Del-
phos, where Themis then lived : she was the oracle of that
place d , being probably a very wise woman, capable of in-
structing the common people in many useful arts of life.
Python governed here with violence and cruelty 6 , and would
not have had Apollo admitted amongst his people : but
Apollo prevailed against him, and killed him f . Python was
also surnamed Draco ; and hence the fabulous writers might
take occasion to invent what they offer to us of Apollo's
killing the huge serpent called Python h . Apollo seems to
have lived the rest of his life chiefly at Delphos ; to have
formed and instructed the people here; and to have been so
much respected and admired by them, that posterity after-
wards fixed him a temple in this place, and supposed him

u Apollod. 1. ii. c. 4. . ii. Spa KOL Trapdvofjiov. Strabo ubi sup.

x KaO' %v xp& vov r ^ v 'ATr^AAwj/a TV c Apollod. ubi sup. Strabo ibid.
yyv eiri6vTa, Tj/j-epovv Tobs.avQp&jrovs air6 d Apollodor.
re fStv avrjfJLfptav Kap-rrwv KOL rS)V fi'uav. e Id. ibid.

Strabo, Geog. 1. ix. p. 422. ed. 1620. f Id. ibid.

y Id. ibid. s Strabo ubi sup.

z Id. ibid. h Ovid. Metam. Strabo, p. 423. ed.

a Apoll. 1. i. c. 4. Par. 1620.

b flrvov exovTo. rbv T<faw, fiicuov b.v-

94 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK X.

the god that gave the oracles here, which were so much
sought to in after- ages.

We read of Pluto that he left Crete, and went to Tartarus,
and carried away Proserpine the daughter of Ceres with
him 1 : Ceres herself, after her travels in search of her
daughter k , settled in Attica 1 , where she became so famous
for the method she taught for nursing Deiphon the son of
Celeus king of Eleusis, as to be said by a particular regimen
to have made him immortal m . By agreement with Pluto,
her daughter Proserpine was to live with her two thirds of
the year, and the other third part in Tartarus ; and this oc-
casioned the fable that Proserpine lived a third part of the
year with Pluto, and the rest of her time with the gods
above 11 . The Arundel marble may seem to fix the time of
Ceres's being in Attica something late, namely, to A. M.
2596, which is about 80 years after the 95th year of Ju-
piter P: but Ceres was sister of Jupiter^, and therefore can
hardly be supposed to have come into Attica so many years
after Jupiter must have been dead. But I would observe,
that the marble epoch records that Ceres taught Tripto-
lemus the son of Celeus to sow corn, and sent him to teach
other nations. It is not likely that Triptolemus began his
travels before he was two or three and thirty, and his father
Celeus might be born forty years before Triptolemus : now
Ceres nursed Celeus when an infant 1 ": let us count back
from Triptolemus's travels to teach the sowing corn, to the
infancy of Celeus, when Ceres came into Attica, 73 years,
and we shall fix her coming into that country A. M. 2523,
i. e. near the time of Jupiter's death, seven years after his
95th year ; and about this time she may indeed be thought
to have settled in Attica. Perhaps nothing more was in-
tended in the marble epoch than to fix the time of Triptole-
mus's travels, and it seems to have fixed them agreeably
enough to what might be the true time of his life, and

i Apollod. 1. i. c. 5. Ep. xii.

k Id. ibid. P Vid. quse sup.

1 Antonin. lib. Metamorph. c. 2. q Apoll. 1. i. c. i. . 3. Diodor. Sic.

m Apollod. ubi sup. 1. v. c. 68.

n Id. ibid. r Apollod. 1. i. c. 5.

AND PKOFANE HISTORY. 95

Ceres might be said to teach him his art, merely because
at the composing the marble epoches, Ceres was esteemed
the goddess that presided over this part of husbandry. Nep-
tune was the great master of the seas with Jupiter and his
family ; and we may suppose he managed and conducted all
the voyages made by any of them. Plato tells us that he
settled and planted his children in the island Atlantis 8 ,
which seems from Strabo to have been either an island near
Eubcea 1 , or in the Ionian sea near to Elis u , a city of Pelo-
ponnesus. In these and the adjacent seas Neptune had
exercised his skill in sailing, and in some isle of these seas
we may well suppose him to have lived, when he gave over
a seaman's life. Mars and Minerva were frequently at
Athens, if they did not constantly live there x : Vulcan is
supposed to have gone to Lemnosy; Ops, who was also
called Rhea, removed from Crete to Phrygia, and dwelt 011
mount Cybelum, and became famous there 2 , and the Arundel
marble fixes the time of her appearing there to A. M. 2499%
which falls towards the latter end of Jupiter's life, and very
well agrees to the times we have supposed him to live in.
Ops was afterwards called Cybele, from the mountain she
lived in : she brought arts and sciences from Crete into these
parts, and hence it came to pass, that in after-ages divine
honours were paid to her in this country, though in Crete
no rites were ever instituted for her worship b . Cybele's
travelling from Crete into Phrygia might occasion some
places as well as persons in Phrygia to have names given
them, the same that had before been the names of persons
and places in Crete. Thus we read of a mount Ida , and
of the Ida3i Dactyli in both countries. Juno, Vesta, Venus,
Diana, and Mercurius, were occasionally in divers parts of
Greece, and celebrated in all for the arts they excelled in :

s Plato in Critia, p. 1103. ed. Fran- a Epoch, x.

cof. 1602. b Qycrl 5 ird\ iv & 2/dtytos iv rrj Kp^rr?

t Strab. Geog. 1. i. p. 60, 61. ed. Par. ras TTJS 'Peas ri/j.ks ^ vo^ffQai fwjSe

1620. eirixwpid&iv. Strab. 1. x. p. 472. ed.

Lib. vii. p. 346. 1620.

x Apollod. 1. iii. c. 4. 13. c "1$,, y& p T fc # pos T< $ T

y Apollod. 1. i. c. 3. . 5. T & Kpirructv. Ibid.

z Diod. 1. iii. Strabo, 1. x.

96 CONNECTION OF SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY.

and thus, although I do not find it to have ever been fact
that Crete obtained an universal empire over all the states of
Greece, though Aristotle thought it well situated and qua-
lified for the acquiring such dominion d ; yet it appears that
its ancient inhabitants were most signally instrumental in
introducing the first rudiments of polity into many of these
nations, instructing both their kings and people to know how
to be useful and beneficial to one another.

Ao/ce? 5* rj vyffos \j] KpfjrtK^'] Kal nal /cet<r0at /coAws. Aristot. de Rep.
' ii. c. 10.

THE

SACRED AND PROFANE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD

CONNECTED.

BOOK XT.

"Y"Y7~HEN the Israelites saw that Moses did not come down
f T to them out of the mount, they were greatly surprised,
and gathered about Aaron, and required him to make them a
god to be carried before them a. Aaron asked them for their
ear-rings, which they forthwith brought him, and Aaron
had them melted down, and a golden calf was made of
them; and the people made acclamations, This is thy god,
O Israel, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt*. Aa-
ron, when he saw the image received with such applause,
built an altar before it, and proclaimed a feast unto the
Lord ; and accordingly next day they met, and offered sa-
crifices to their idol, and celebrated their feast, and rose up

a Exodus xxxii. i. taken as a noun singular, and the

b The Hebrew expression, ver. 4. image here alluded to was but one,

rendered by our translators, These be namely, the calf, and it was dedicated

thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee to but one God, the Lord ; so that the

up out of the land of Egypt, may at first words ought to have been translated in

seem to hint that the Israelites had the singular number,
made gods in the plural number; but c Exodus xxxii. 5.
the word Elohim is known to be often

98 CONNECTION OF THE SACRE!) [BOOK xL

to the games with which they were to end it d . Moses at
this time came down from the mount 6 , and when he en-
tered the camp, and saw the calf, and the people dancing
before it, he was exceedingly moved, and, throwing down
the two tables of the law, which he had in his hands ^ he
took the idol, and melted it; then he reduced the lump of
gold to powder, and mixed the powder with water, and
made the children of Israel to drink it?. After this he
expostulated with Aaron, what could induce him to lead
the people into so great a sin h : Aaron made the best excuse
he could ; represented the perverse disposition of the people ;
that they would not believe they should ever see him more,
and that he could not avoid yielding to their importunity 1 .

The Rabbins think they can entirely excuse Aaron k :
they say that he was forced to a compliance ; that the
people had massacred Hur for opposing their demands, and
would have killed Aaron, if he had not yielded to them*
What authority they had for these assertions I cannot say;
I think we nowhere read of Hur as alive after the time of
this affair : but if what they offer be true, yet I cannot see
that Aaron was innocent: no obstinacy of the people could
have forced him without his own fault 1 , and he should have
been willing to die, rather than to have consented to, and
been partaker of, their sins. It may perhaps be imagined
that Aaron's compliance was attended with some circum-
stances that mitigated the fault of it, from Moses not re-
plying to the apology he made m , and from what is said of
the people in relation to the making of the calf; that they
made the calf which Aaron made n ; as if the making of it was
imputed rather to them than to him. Aaron indeed endea-
vours to clear himself of having had an hand in the actual
making the idol : / cast it, says he, i. e. the gold, which they
gave me, into the fire, and there came out this calf . The ex-

d Exodus xxxii. 6. 1 Justum et tenacem propositi virum

e Ver. 15. Non civium ardor pravajubentium ,
f Ver. 19. JVon vultus instantis tyranni

e Ver. 20. Mente guatit solida, &c.

h Ver. i \ . Hor. Car. 1. iii. ode 3.

i Ver. 22 24. m Exodus xxxii. 21 24.

k Vid. Poole's Synops. in loc. n Ver. 35.

o Ver. 24.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 99

pression is somewhat obscure, and the Rabbins tell us, that
Aaron only cast the gold into the fire ; that the calf came
out by magic art, the melted gold being formed into the
shape of an idol, not by Aaron, but by some invisible agent.
This was one of their fancies ; but Aaron could intend no
such intimation : he designed only to plead that he was not
actually the maker of the image; but that other persons,
and not he, were the founders of it. He represents, that
they required him to make them a god; that hereupon he
asked them for materials; that they brought him their
gold ; then, says he, / cast it into the fire, I delivered it out
of my hands to the use it was designed for, into the furnace
in which it was to be melted, and there came out this calfv;
i. e. I was no further concerned in what was done ; the next
thing I saw was the calf: what was done further was done
by others, not by me : the workmen made the calf, and
brought it to me. And to this account, I should think, what
is related in the 4th verse of this chapter should be agree-
able : we render the verse, And he received them at their hand,
and fashioned it with a graving tool, after lie had made it a
molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, Sec. The present
Hebrew text does indeed require a translation to this pur-
pose : but if the fact was as this verse seems to represent it,
surely Aaron was the person chiefly concerned in the work-
manship of the image, and there could be no room for him
to pretend to plead, that not himself, but other persons were
the makers of it. Upon this account I am apt to suspect,
that the present Hebrew text in this verse has suffered a
little, through the mistake or want of care of very ancient
transcribers ; that Moses most probably wrote the verbs,
which we translate, and he fashioned it, and he made it, not in
the singular, but in the plural number, like the verb vejao-
meru, and they said, which follows them. The variation of
the words thus miswritten is not so considerable, but that
it might easily be made, without any great inattention in
writing, especially, when the first verb in the period, [and
he took them,] being singular, might lead to it. And if we

P Exodus xxxii. 24.
VOL. II. H

100 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [lJOOK XI.

may take the liberty to make this correction, the verse
would run thus: And lie recieved [it, i. e. the gold] at their
hands; and they formed it in a mould % and they made a molten
calf: and they said, This is thy god, O Israel 7 . And thus this
verse would agree to what is suggested in other places, that
Aaron indeed received the gold that was brought him; but
that the forming it in the mould, and the making it into a
calf, and proclaiming it a god, was not done by Aaron, but
by others, by the workmen or artificers, and the people.
But notwithstanding all this, whatever may hence be offered
in mitigation of Aaron^s fault, yet certainly all will be too
little to prove him innocent; and agreeably hereto we find
a great share of the guilt was imputed to him : The Lord was
very angry with him to have destroyed him, but that Moses
prayed for him* .

Moses was commanded to punish the people for the wick-
edness they had committed: and upon finding them un-
armed, and upon no guard, incapable of making opposition,
he stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord's
side ? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi ga-
thered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them,
Thus saith the Lord God ; Put every man his sword by his side,
and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and
slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and
every man his neighbour. And the children of Levi did accord-
ing to the word of Moses : and there fell of the people that day
about three thousand men*.

Our English version does not entirely come up to the
Hebrew expression in the 25th verse : we render the verse,
When Moses saw that the people were naked, (for Aaron had
made them naked to their shame amongst their enemies). The
metaphor is indeed easy, to say they were naked, as being

1 I should take the word tain to shut up like a chest, to contain and

signify here not a graving tool, as we form the metal to be poured into it.

render it; that is indeed its general ac- r The words of the text would be

ceptation : but it is used in a very dif- TttJH'l mna 12N "H2V1 D"PQ np^ 1 )

ferent sense, 2 Kings chap. v. ver. 23. .bwiU)' "pr^N n^ TlTQNn HDDO bJ3?

It there signifies a bag, or little chest, s Deut. ix. 20.

and by an easy metaphor from this use * Exodus xxxii. 26, 27, 28.
of it, it may denote a mould made to

AKB PllOFANE HISTORY. 101

unarmed, and the Hebrew verb paran is capable of being
thus used; but this is not its whole signification, and it
hints more than this in the place before us. The first and
natural signification of the verb paran is, to free or to set at
liberty 11 : it is thus used by Moses x : The king of Egypt said
unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, [taprinu ceth
hanam mimmanashaivy] let the people, or set them free from
their works ? From this sense the word was easily applied to
express the freedom or liberty that people had on holy-days,
or came to signify in general to keep holy - day ; and we find
it thus used in Judges v. 2 ; for a true translation of that
verse would be, Praise the Lord in [or at] keeping the feasts
[or holy-days] of Israel z . To these the people willingly offered
themselves*: they came \behithnaddeb nam] b every one as his
spirit made him willing*, i. e. every one without compulsion,
just as his inclination led him ; and they behaved at them
with the same freedom; for we must not imagine that the
public games of any nation were at first under the regula-
tions which time introduced; but rather they were a sort
of voluntary meetings, where authority of magistrates and
subjection of inferiors were laid aside ; and every one headed
a party, or acted his part, or took his place to see the diver-
sion as it happened, or as his fancy led him. And in an high
scene of such diversion Moses found his people, [ci paran
hua\ A ; for they were keeping high holy -day, and at full
liberty : the expression is remarkable : it is not ci paran,
which had been enough to express that they were at liberty,
or keeping holy-day, but ci paran hua*. In the Hebrew
tongue the use of this pronoun hua has sometimes a pecu-
liarity, which I think has not been taken notice of: ge-

u Vid. Avenar. et al. Lexicograph. in c This is the signification of the

verbo jno. verb 213 : it is thus used Exodus xxxv.

x Exod. v. 4. 21. 29. where the people came volun-

y vroynn nyrrnN lyncn. Heb. tarily to make their offerings, every one

text. giving, without any exaction, just what

z The Hebrew words are his inclination led him to.

toitt'a my-iD yioi d in yiD3 Heb. text. Exod. xxxii.

Israel in ferias feriando in. 25.

a Judges v. 2. e Ibid.

b Text Heb. or aianna.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

nerally it signifies no more than THIS or THAT, or HE
or THE emphatically ; but it is sometimes used to denote a
person's doing a thing, of his own head, as we say in
English, or without regard to the direction of any other.
Thus, in the case of Balaam, when God had allowed him to
go with the messengers of Balak, if they came in the morn-
ing to call him f , because he was more hasty than he ought
to have been, and went to them, instead of staying until they
should come to trims, it was said of him, not ci halak, that
he went, but ci holek hua\ i. e. that he went of his own head,
or without being called : and thus in the plural number
hem is used in the 95th Psalm. We translate the place, It is a
people that do err in their hearts 1 ; but the Hebrew words ex-
press more: In his heart had been belibbo k , or bilbabo 1 : In
their hearts had been Ulbabam m , or belibbam n : but the
words here used are lebab hem, which suggest, that people
erred in heart, from acting of their own heads; from pursuing
their own ways, or following their own imaginations ; for
this was the perpetual crime of the Israelites, and this was
what the Psalmist here intended, as appears by the close of
the verse, for they have not known my ways. And thus the
word hua is here used in the passage before us : the people
[paran hua\ were at loose hand, under no command or con-
trol : distinctions and authority were laid aside, and every
one at the games was his own man, and consequently the
camp must have been in no condition of being called to
order and a posture of defence, if a sudden exigence had
required it.

From what I have said about the use of the word paran,
it is easy to see what the verse I am treating of expresses to
us; namely, I. that the people were upon no guard; in no
posture of defence ; under no direction or command of their
proper officers; but were scattered up and down the plain
at their games, as their fancy led them. And this the LXX.
took to be the meaning of the place, and accordingly trans-

f Numbers xxii. 20. k Psalm xiv. i.

g Ver. 21. 1 Psalm xv. 2.

h Ver. 22. m Psalm xxviii. 3.

i Psalm xcv. 10. n Psalm Ixxiv. 8.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 103

late it, 'I8o)i' Mowo-f}? rov \abv, OTL 6ieo-Ke6aorai, i. e. Moses
seeing the people to be scattered, or dispersed. They were in no
formed body to be able to make head against an enemy ; and,
2. they were free of their armour, or unarmed, naked in
this sense, not clothed to defend themselves against any vio-
lence that might be offered to them P. This was the con-
dition in which Moses found them exposed to their shamed,
or in a shameful manner amongst their enemies : and cer-
tainly Aaron's conduct was very inconsiderate in this parti-
cular ; for their enemies were not far distant. The Amalek-
ites had not long before attacked them r . And what might
have been the fate of the whole people, if any considerable
attempt had been now made, when they were so unguarded,
that a small body of men, such as Moses here appointed from
amongst the Levites, might go in and out from gate to gate of
the camp 5 , and without difficulty kill as many as they would
of them ?

Some learned writers have wandered far from what Moses
intended here to hint to us, by taking the expression of the
people's being naked in too strict a sense, as if the people
were indeed literally so when Moses came to them. Mon-
ceius imagines that Aaron had stripped them of their
clothes ; but the reasons he gives for the doing it are
very whimsical : he supposes that the persons who had
been guilty of the idolatry had a tumour upon their groin,
occasioned by their drinking of the water into which Moses
had strowed the powder of the idol 1 , and that Aaron had

Exodus xxxii. 25. covered; for to have the head free, wader
P The word par an, as I have ob- no restraint, authority, power, is the
served, primarily signifies to free or set Hebrew expression for being uncovered;
at liberty ; and from hence by an easy and therefore not to have the head free,
metaphor it denotes to free ourselves ^ovaiav %x* iv ^ ^ fe^a^s, i Cor.
from, or put off, any dress which we xi. 10. to have power on the head, may
had upon us. Thus (paran rosh] to denote the contrary, or to be covered,
free the head, is the expression for the The Apostle seems to have put an He-
high priest's putting off the attire he brew idiom into Greek words, which,
wore upon his head, Levit. xxi. 10. unless we consider what a like expression
and likewise for women's putting off in Hebrew would suggest to us, do not
their head-dresses. Numb. v. 18. And at first sight express very clearly what
this use of the word intimates to us he intended by them,
whence St. Paul took an expression in <1 Exodus xxxii. 25.
his Epistle to the Corinthians. The * Exodus xvii.
woman, he says, ought to have power Exodus xxxii. 27.
on her head: he means, ought to be * Vid. Pol. Synops. Critic, in loc.

104 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

stripped them, either, i. to prevent an increase of their
infection ; or, 2. to discover to Moses who were guilty and
who were innocent ; or, 3. to cause the innocent to separate
from the guilty, that they might escape their punishment.
But the whole of this fancy is without foundation. It is
like a whim of some of the fathers, who imagined that the
beards of those who drank of the water above mentioned
turned yellow. Bochart mentions a version, made in the
thirteenth century, wherein the 27th verse of this chapter
of Exodus is thus rendered : Slay ye every one his brother,
his friend^ his neighbour, even all those who have golden
beards. And the gloss upon the text adds, that those who wor-
shipped the calf had their beards turned into a gold colour ;
for the powder stuck to the hair miraculously : and Saurin tells
us, that he had a Bible printed at Antwerp in the year 1 53 1
with this gloss in it u . But the reader may be furnished with
many fancies of this sort, if it can be worth while to search
for them x . There are indeed other writers, who contend
that the Israelites were found by Moses really naked ; and
they endeavour to defend their opinion with a better ap-
pearance both of argument and learning. They suppose
that the Israelites were dancing naked before their idol,
and that the Egyptians had very ancient rites in their re-
ligious institutions, in imitation of which the Israelites
might celebrate their feast with this lewd diversion. They
remark, that the Egyptians had dedicated a golden calf to
one of their deities y, from whence possibly the Israelites
might take their pattern, and that both Plutarch 2 and
Diodorus a hint very indecent practices in the Egyptian
sacra; and that there is a passage in Herodotus b , which
suggests them to have solemnized games, such as might
lead the Israelites into the naked dance here alluded to.

u Dissert. 53. Ka\f6/j.vos. Herod. 1. iii. c. 28.

x Vid. Targ. Jonath. et Hierosol. z In lib. de Isid. et Osirid. p. 358. ed.

Y BOVV SldxpVffOV 67TI TTfvdfl T7JS 0OU 1624.

Seutvvovffi. Plut. in lib. de Isid. et Osirid. a Diod. Sic. 1. i. p. 13.
p. 336. ed. Xyl. 1624. We may be b TvirTovrai fj.lv ykp Srj /xera ri}v flu-
allowed to translate ftovv here by our ariav iravrss ical iraffai, pvpidSes Kdpra
English word calf, if it be considered iro\\al avdptaircav. rlv Se [or r$ 8e] rvir-
that Herodotus called the Egyptian rovrai, ov /nol '6ffi6v Iffn \eyeiv. Herodot.
Apis so : fx fl ^e & M<^X OS O^TOS 6 "Airis 1. ii. C. 6l.

AND PROFANE HISTO11Y. 105

This is the utmost that can be offered for imagining Aaron
to have really stripped the people. But to all this it is
easy to answer : for, i. the passage in Herodotus does in-
deed seem to hint some obscenity, which the historian
thought it not decent to give a full narration of c : but we
must suppose a great deal more than is hinted by him, to
make it come up to the purpose for which it is cited d . But,

2. if what we find in Herodotus could be supposed to de-
scribe such a dance as the Israelites are by these learned
writers said to have practised, yet it must be remarked, that
what the historian alludes to, as well as the obscene sacra in
the Isiaca and Osiria of the Egyptians, were all of later date
than the times of Moses : they were said to be the institutions
of Isis e , and they were not introduced until after the Egyp-
tians worshipped hero-gods, and that happened not until
many years after the death of Moses f . And therefore,

3. though the heathen nations, when they had deserted
that knowledge of God, which by revelation God himself
had shewed unto them, did in time become vain enough in
their imaginations to admit shocking turpitudes into their
religious institutions, yet they sunk into these things by
degrees, and we have no reason to think the Egyptians were
thus early so far gone, as to afford a precedent in any of
their sacred games for such a dance as these writers ima-
gine : nor can I see, if they had, how Aaron can be con-
ceived to have been so lost to all sense of decency as to have
copied after such a pattern.

In order to punish the Israelites for the idolatry they had
been guilty of, we are told that all the sons of Levi gathered
themselves together unto Moses s , and we cannot but think,

c Suspicetur aliquis rem turpem et lebrant. Heec Plutarchus. Hoc etiam

obscoenam, quam aures honestse, vix phallo percuti solitos in sacris illis exe-

etiam in rebus profanis nominandam crandis JEgyptioS probabile est. Vid.

audire sustineant: quum Typhon in- Gronov. Not. in Herodot. 1. ii. p. in.
ventum Osiridis cadaver in partes xiv. d Quod opinantur aliqui, ^Egyptios

divisum disjecisset, Isis perquirendo in his sacris saltasse nudos et nudas, ut

singulas reperit prseter pudendam, quse pudenda phallo percuterentur, hoc vi-

in fluvium projecta mox a Phagro et detur gratis dictum.
Oxyryncho piscibus devorata fuerat : e Plutarch, in lib. de Isid. et Osirid.
illius igitur loco ad ejus similitudinem f Vol. ii. b. viii.
factum TOV tyaXXov consecravit, cui S Exodus xxxii. 26.
etiam nunc diem festum ^Egyptii ce-

106 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

from the strict order that was given them h , that they must
have killed every one a man ; and yet the number of all
that fell that day were but about three thousand l . The
Levites, men arid children, were above two and twenty
thousand k : the children indeed could not serve in the em-
ployment; but they were more than eight thousand of
them from thirty years old to fifty 1 ; and if but every one
of these had killed a man, there must have fallen near three
times the number above mentioned. The vulgar Latin
translation has the number three and twenty thousand; but
this is a variation from the Hebrew text, for which there is
no colour from any copy or other version : some learned
men have indeed imagined that St. Paul suggested the same
thing ; but they misrepresent the design of the place they
refer to m : St. Paul intended, in the verse they cite, to give
the number, not of those who were slain for this idolatry,
but who died of the plague for their fornication", in the
matter of Peor and of Cozbi . There is, I confess, a difficulty
in supposing that but three thousand should fall, if so many
hands, as the whole tribe of Levi afforded, had took up
arms against them. But the real fact seems to have been
this : not the whole tribe of Levi, but only all the sons of
Levi, who were amongst those unto whom Moses called,
came together to this service. That the whole tribe were
not engaged in it, is evident from the charge which Moses
gave them: they were to slay every man his brother?, and
every man his son<i, if any so nearly related came within
their reach ; but this could not have been supposed, if all
the Levites had taken up the sword ; for then all their
brethren and children would have been with them, and
there could have been none at the games so nearly related
as a son or a brother, to have been slain by them. But fur-
ther; Moses stood in the gate of the camp r , and called to
the persons whom he employed, and the persons he called

h Exodus xxxii. 27. n Numbers xxv.

i Ver. 28. o Ver. 18.

k Numbers iii. P Exodus xxxii. 27.

1 Numbers iv. 48. 1 Ver. 29.

m i Corinth, x. 8. r Ver. 26.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 107

to were not within the camp ; for he directed them to
enter the camp, to go in and out from gate to gate of it 5 : had
he called to those who were at the games, he needed not
have gone to the gate of the camp ; he would rather have
called upon the spot where they were playing them. I
should therefore think that there were numbers out of
every tribe, who had retired from the camp whilst this idol-
atry was acting in it: unto these Moses called from the
gate, and from amongst these all the Levites, to about such
a number as might, in executing what he directed, kill
about three thousand men, gathered themselves together unto
him. Moses had enjoined them to take up the sword for
God's service*, and, if they desired to acquit themselves so
as to be accepted by him, to be careful not to make the
work they were engaged in a scene of their own private
passions and partialities, but to execute the vengeance
strictly and indiscriminately upon all that should happen
in their way, how near and dear soever they might be to
them. On the next day Moses remonstrated to the people
the greatness of their sin; but promised to endeavour to
intercede for them u : God was pleased so far to admit his
intercession, as to order him to prepare the people to march
for Canaan x , telling him, that he would send an angel be-
fore them to put them in possession of the land y ; but that
himself would not go up any further in the midst of them 2 .
Upon Moses's acquainting the people herewith, they were
greatly dejected a : God hereupon appointed them a solemn
humiliation to avert his displeasure b , and Moses erected a
tent without the camp, and called it the tabernacle of the
congregation , and upon this the cloudy pillar descended,

8 Exodus xxxii. 27. is to be against his son and his brother,

t The commentators seem to suspect that he [God] may give you a blessing.

a difficulty in this place, imagining the The meaning of the verse must be ob-

verb N^n to be here used not in its vious to every reader.

common acceptation ; but I am at a u Exodus xxxii. 30.

loss to find out what could lead them x Ver. 34.

to any such imagination. The He- 7 Exodus xxxiii. 2.

brew text verbally translated would z Ver. 3.

run thus: for Moses said,F HI your hands a Ver. 4.

[i. e. with the sword, or take up your b Ver. 5.

sword] to day for the Lord, for each man c Ver. 7.

108 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

in the sight of all the people; and here the Lord talked
with Moses d , and at length promised him, that his presence
should go with them, and give them rest 6 .

It cannot but at first sight seem a very monstrous thing
to us, that the Israelites in the midst of what God was doing
for them; whilst his presence amongst them was so visible
to them ; whilst the sight of his glory was like a devouring
fire on the top of the mount ; I say, whilst God was thus
marvellously and evidently near to them, it may be thought
very strange and unaccountable, that they should so pre-
sently fall away from what had been commanded them f ,
and fall into what must appear to us a most gross and sense-
less folly: to set up a calf; to make it a god; to pay wor-
ship to it. It is generally said that the Israelites dedicated
the calf in imitation of what the Egyptians practised in
their religion: this was Philo's opinion , and St. Stephen
confirms it h ; and therefore what some have supposed, that
Aaron formed the calf to represent a cherubim 1 , is not only
a mere groundless fancy, but contradicts what the sacred
writer hints to us ; namely, that their turning their hearts
back to Egypt, their inclining to have such sacra as were
there used, was what led them to set up this object for their
worship k . It has been argued by some, that the Israelites
intended here to fall entirely into the Egyptian religion,
and that the deity they made the calf to was some god of
the Egyptians 1 . But I think it plain that this was not the
fact: the Israelites evidently designed to worship in the
calf the God who had brought them out of the land of
Egypt m , and their feast was accordingly proclaimed, not to
any Egyptian deity, but to the Lord; to Jehovah* ; to their
own God ; so that their idolatry consisted not in really wor-
shipping a false deity, but in making an image to the true
and living God : and this being the fact, and this fact being

d Exodus xxxiii. 9, 10, u. i Spencer, de Leg. Heb. 1. i. c. i.

e Ver. 14. . i. Witsii ^Egyptiac. 1. ii. c. 2.

f Exod. xx. 4. k Acts vii. ubi sup.

g Phil. Jud. de vit. Mosis, 1. iii. p. ! Spencer, ubi sup.
677. ed. Par. 1640. m Exodus xxxii, 4.

h Acts vii. 39, 40. n Ver. 5.

AND PKOFANE HISTORY. 109

expressly condemned as idolatry by the Apostle , the pa-
pists are from hence unanswerably charged with idolatry
for their image- worship, and they can in no wise justify
themselves ; for what they can offer, if it might be ad-
mitted, would vindicate the Israelites as well as them.
It will be still said, what, if the Egyptian religion was indeed
full of these senseless superstitions, is it not strange that the
Israelites should be so fond of continually imitating the rites
and usages of that nation? I answer; this must indeed
seem strange and unaccountable, if we can imagine that
they were for copying after these patterns, merely because
they were Egyptian : but the fact appears in another light,
if we consider that the wisdom of Egypt was in these days
of the highest repute of any in the world, and that the
Egyptian institutions were not at this time suspected to be
absurd, unreasonable, or superstitious P ; but, on the contrary,
reason and philosophy were thought incontestibly to support
the practice of them 9. I cannot imagine the Israelites to
have been such servile imitators of Egypt, as some learned
writers are apt to represent them: we see in fact they had
rejected their gods ; being convinced that the God who
had brought them out of the land of Egypt was the only
God to be worshipped by them r ; and had they been as
sensible that the calf they made was a real absurdity, they
would, I dare say, not have been at all induced to make it
by any knowledge or imitation of the sacra of the Egyp-
tians ; but, according to the rudiments of the world in these
ages, reason was thought very clearly to dictate, that images
were necessary to a lively and significant service of the
Deity 8 , and such a sort of image as the Israelites now used
was accounted to be by nature designed for this very pur-

i Corinth, x. 7. pfvuv fKcurrov. Id. ibid. p. 378.
P Ou5ei> yap &Xoyov, ouSe juu0oi&s, ou5e r Exodus xxxii. 4, 5.

urrb 8fi<riSai(j.oi'ias (#<nr/> fvioi vo/j.iov- s Plutarch, ubi sup. Antiques simu-

ffiv) tyKarfffToixeiovro tcpovpylais. Plu- lachra Deorum confinxisse, quse cum

tarch. in lib. de Isid. et Osirid. p. 353. oculis animadvertissent, hi, qui adis-

ed. Par. 1624. sent divina mysteria, possent animam

1 KoAws ol vonoi TO. irepl ras 6v(rlas mundi ac partes ejus, id est, Deos ve-
Zrai-w, 8tb 8t>aATTa irpbs ravra \6yov ros videre. Varro in Fragment, p. 40.
IK j>i\o<ro<t>ias pvarayvybv cu/aAa^oi/ras, ed. Franc. 1619.

tolas $iavo(1crQ0.i rcav \yo/J.fVQ)V KOI

110 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

pose 1 ; and the wise and the learned thought they wor-
shipped (frvo-iKQs, and esteemed it a part of natural religion
to dedicate these sacra. And thus, I should think, I might
justly say of the Israelites, that in all they did in this matter
there had no temptation taken them but what is common to
man". It is indeed true, God had made a covenant with
this people*, and the import and design of it was to engage
them to obey his voice indeed?, and to walk in the ways which
he should command them 2 , that they might not walk in
the counsels of their own hearts % but that they should trust
in the Lord with their whole heart, and not lean to their own
understanding^: this was to have been their wisdom, this
their understanding, in the sight of all nations , if they
would have bowed their hearts to adhere to it : but when
or where has mankind been truly ready to pay unto God
this obedience of faith ? Our first parents would not be re-
strained by a divine command from what they thought in
reason was to be desired to make them wise d : and thus the
Israelites would have images, when they thought reason and
natural science to be for them, though God had said ex-
pressly, Make no image 6 . In the same spirit and way of
thinking, the learned Greeks in their day would not admit
the doctrine of the cross, though attested to come from
God by the demonstration of the spirit and of power*, because
it seemed foolishness to themS: and I need not remark how
difficult it is at this day to persuade men to have their faith
stand, not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God h .
Vain man would be wise, though man be born as the wild ass's
colt 1 . A restless inclination to pursue what seem the dictates
of human wisdom, rather than strictly to adhere to what
God commands, has ever been the Trei/oaoyxos avQp&mvos'i, I
might say the human foible, the seducement, which has

t TtyuwfTOS Sta Tovrcav rb Otiov &s evap- c Deut. iv. 6.

yeffrepau efffarrpcov Kal <pv<ret yeyov6T<i>v. d Gen. iii. 6.

Plut. ubi sup. e Exodus xx. 4.

u i Corinth, x. 13. f i Corinth, i. 24.

x Exodus xxiv. 5 8. Deut. v. 3. Ver. 23.

y Exodus xix. 5. Jerem. vii. 22, 23. h i Corinth, ii. 5.

z Jerem. ibid. i Job xi. 12.

Jerem. vii. 24. J i Corinth, x. 13.

b Proverbs iii. 5.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. Ill

been too apt to prevail against us. Our modern reasoners
think they argue right, when they contend, that " if we find
" any thing in a revelation that appears contrary to our
" reason, no external evidence whatsoever will be sufficient
" to prove its divine original ; but that, upon observing
" any thing in it so opposite to our natural light and under-
" standing, we ought to give up such a revelation as absurd,
" and therefore false, whatever extrinsic proofs may be of-
" fered in support of it." But was not this the part which
the Israelites here acted ? To have no images to direct
their worship was, according to the then theory of human
knowledge, contrary to what they called science and rea-
son: as soon therefore as Moses was gone from them, they
regarded not the commandment that had been given them.
The external proof which they had of its divine authority
weighed but little with them, in comparison of what they
imagined reason to dictate very clearly in this matter.

Some learned writers endeavour to argue, that if the
Israelites had not fallen into idolatry by setting up the calf,
God would not have given them the ritual or ceremonial
part of the law k : they say, that at first God spake not
unto them, nor commanded them concerning burnt-offerings or
sacrifices 1 ; but gave them his statutes, and shewed them his
judgments) which if a man do, he shall even live by them m ;
adding to these only his sabbaths, to be a sign between him
and them, that they might know him to be the Lord n . They
observe, that the ten commandments, and the statutes which
follow to the end of the 33d chapter of Exodus, do well
answer to these accounts of the prophets, and were indeed
such a law of moral righteousness, as that the man which
doth those things shall live by them , without any further
observances to recommend him unto God. But when the

k Antequam offenderent Dominum, Clar. Schol. in Ezek. Vid. Spencer, de

idolum illud erigentes, Decalogum tan- Legib. Heb. 1. i. c. 4. . 4.
turn acceperunt ; post idololatriam vero 1 Jerem. vii. 22.
et blasphemias, ceremonias legales mul- m Ezek. xx. 1 1 .
tas dedit, ad nihil aliud utiles, quam ut n Ver. 12.
eos remorarentur a dsemonum cultu et o Rom. x. 5.
sacrilega superstitione gentium. Isidor. P Ezek. xx. 24.

CONNECTION OF THE SACKED [liOOK XT.

Israelites would not walk in God's statutes, but despised his
judgments?, and had their eyes after their fathers' idols 9,
that then the ceremonial law was added because of their
transgressions r y then God gave them also, or over and above
what he had before commanded them, statutes that were not
good, and judgments whereby they should not live 5 ; namely,
the positive and ritual precepts, which Moses was then di-
rected to deliver to them. We may find this opinion at
large in the work called the Apostolical Constitutions* ; and
there is an appointment in the 2oth chapter of Exodus,
which perhaps may be thought to favour it : an altar of
earth, or of rough unhewn stone, was commanded at the
giving the law for all their sacrifices u ; but at the institu-
tion of the ritual injunctions a different altar was appointed,
of much workmanship, and of another nature x ; which may
seem to hint to us, that the observances belonging to it
were not a continuation of what was at first intended, but
rather an addition of new rites, like the altar they belonged
to, and of a different composition. But I answer,

I. What is contended for, that God did not intend and
command the ritual part of the law of Moses, before the
Israelites set up the calf, is not true in fact. The 25th, 26th,
27th, 28th, 29th, 3Oth, and 3ist chapters of Exodus shew
us undeniably that the tabernacle was ordered; the utensils
and furniture of it directed ; the order of the Levitical
priesthood was appointed; the persons designed for the
offices of it were named ; their vestments and rites of conse-
cration, the altars, and the daily offerings were prescribed ;
in a word, the foundation and frame of the whole Jewish
law was laid and formed by the immediate designation of

Q Ezek. xx. 24. Kpiffeis iroiei<rdai. Const. Apost. 1. vi. c.

r Gal. iii. 19. 19, 2O. ed. Whist. 1711. 'OTrdre Se OLTOV

s Ezek. xx. 25. AooC TOVTOV a/j.vf)/j.oves virrjpat>, Kal \i6a-

* AfSuKev vofjiov wirXovv ets /3oTj6fiav \ov avrl TOV eou firfKaXecravTO r6re

TOV (pvfftKOv, Ka.6a.pbV) creoT-fjpiov, ayiov, ev opyivOels 6 &fbs eSTjcre*/ avrovs Seff/j.o'is

$ leal rb tSiov ovofJLa 7/caTe0TO, re'A.ctoj', a\vrois, ffTifiuffei (^oprLff/jLov, Kal <TK\T)p6-

av\\eiiTT), SeKa Xoyioiv v\^pt], apcafjiov, TIJTI KXoiov. Ibid. 6 TOV 0eoC vlbs TO

^Tri(rrpf(povra tyvxas N(fyios 5e e<rrti/ rj fTreiffaKra TreptcTAev. c. 22. OVK aveXtav

$Kd\oyos, *r\v irpb TOV T)>V \abv /uoo^o- T~bv <j)vo~iKbv v6fj.ov, a\\a iravffas TO. Sia

7roi7?<rot Oebs avTols frofj.oOeTri<rev O.K- T^S Sevrfpctxrecas firelffaKTa. Ibid.

ovo~Trj (fxavfj, OVTOS Se SLKCUOS O~TI, Sib u Exodus xx. 24.

Kal v6p.os \eyeTai 810 rb <pvo~i tiiKaias Tas x Exodus xxvii.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 113

God to Moses, before the people had corrupted themselves
by their idolatry. Had these chapters followed after the
making of the calf, or had we any reason to imagine that
the contents of them were not dictated to Moses until his
second going up into the mount ^, after he had made in-
tercession for the people z , there would be some appearance
in favour of the argument above stated : but since the se-
veral directions contained in these chapters were all evi-
dently given to Moses before the Lord intimated to him to
get him down from the mount, for that the people had
corrupted themselves*; whatever men of learning may
think to offer, to prove the ritual law not to have been in-
tended until the Israelites fell into idolatry, it is indisputably
plain that the fact was otherwise; and that God was deli-
vering to and instructing Moses in all the parts of it, before
the idolatry of the calf was contrived or intended by the
people. And agreeably hereto we may observe,

II. That, after Moses had made intercession for the Israel-
ites, and was commanded to renew the tables b ; to erect the
tabernacle 6 ; and had a visible sign of God's approving it, by
the cloud's covering it, and the glory of the Lord filling it,
and God's speaking unto him out of it d ; we may, I say,
observe, that in all these things nothing new or before un-
designed was done; but the very law was now further
completed, which God before the sin of the calf had in part
delivered to them, and it was completed exactly according
to, and without any deviation from, the directions which
had before the commission of that sin been given unto
Moses; and the visible signs of God's presence upon the
erecting the tabernacle were exactly according to what
God promised him the first time of his being with him on
the mount, namely, that he would meet him at the door of
the tabernacle of the congregation, and speak there unto him ;
and there meet with the children of Israel, and sanctify the
tabernacle by his glory, to sanctify the tabernacle and the

y Exodus xxxiv. \, 28. c Exodus xxxv, xxxvi, xxxvii, xxxviii,

z Ch. xxxii. 31. xxxiii. xxxix.

a Ch. xxxii. 7. d Ch. xl. 34. Levit. i. i.

b Ch. xxxiv. i.

114 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [OOK XI.

altar, and Aaron and his sons, and to dwell amongst the chil-
dren of Israel, and to be their GW e . All these things were
promised before the Israelites set up their idol, exactly ac-
cording to what was afterwards performed; and therefore
if there be indeed any passages in Scripture which repre-
sent the ritual part of the law to have been given upon
account of the idolatry of the people, we must find some
way to new model the history of Moses, or it will not agree
with them. But,

III. There are no texts of Scripture which intimate the
ritual law to have been given, because of the Israelites' idol-
atry. The abettors of this opinion do indeed commonly
cite the words of St. Paul f , or of the prophets Jeremiah s
and Ezekiel h , to countenance their assertion ; but it is easy
to shew that the passages they refer to have no such mean-
ing as they would put upon them. For, i. St. Paul indeed
says, The law was added because of transgressions } ; but he
does not here treat of the ritual part of the law in opposi-
tion to the moral, nor suggest that any one part of the law
was added for the Israelites not having punctually observed
some other part of it ; but he speaks of the whole Mosaical
dispensation, and argues it to have been instituted upon ac-
count of the wickedness and corruption of the world.
When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, true reli-
gion was almost perished from the face of the earth; men
in all nations were greatly corrupted both in faith and
manners: hereupon God was pleased to choose to himself
the house of Jacob, to be a peculiar treasure unto him above
all people*-; and he revealed himself unto them, and gave
them a law to recall and to preserve them from going after
the heathens to learn their ways, until the seed should come 1 ,
and to shut them up unto the faith, which should afterwards
be revealed, and to bring them unto Christ". This is the
argument of the apostle in the place cited, and it suggests to

e Exodus xxix. 42 45. k Exodus xix. 5.

f Gal. iii. 19. 1 Gal. iii. 19.

S Jerem. vii. 22. m Ver. 23.

h Ezek. xx. 1 1 26. n Ver. 24.
i Galat. ubi sup.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 115

us, not that God gave the Israelites first a moral law,
just and holy and good, and afterwards, when they would
not observe this, then a ritual, weak, and unprofitable law,
to punish them for their wickedness and folly; but it re-
presents that God gave them the law, the whole law, as
Moses has related, consisting indeed of divers precepts, and
various commands, but all excellently adapted to have had
a great effect, if the Jews had not behaved themselves
strangely, and defeated the benefits which they might have
received from it. But, 2. the prophet Jeremiah remarks,
that God spake not unto the Israelites, nor commanded them, in
the day that he brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning
burnt-offerings or sacrifices ; and from hence it is argued,
that these were not a part of the religion that was at first
enjoined them : but we shall best see the meaning of the pro-
phet, by considering what it was that God spake unto them
at the time he refers to. And we find that when Moses
went up unto God, the Lord called unto him out of the moun-
tain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell
the children of Israel ; Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyp-
tians, and how I bare you on eagles' 1 wings, and brought you
unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed,
and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto
me above all people : for all the earth is mine : and ye shall be
unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the
words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. And
Moses came and called for the elders of the people, and laid
before their faces all these words which the Lord commanded
him?. And thus it was indeed fact as the prophet repre-
sents, that God did not speak unto them, nor command
them in that day concerning sacrifices or burnt- offerings ;
I might add, nor concerning the not being guilty of idol-
atry, of murder, theft or any other wickedness ; but this
thing he then commanded them, saying, Obey my voice, and ye
shall be my people; for the covenant was not limited to
particular, or to any set of precepts, but it was a general
engagement to obey God's voice indeed, and to do and per-

Jerem. vii. 22. P Exodus xix. 3 7.

VOL. II. 1

116 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

form all the statutes and judgments and laws which God
should think fit to give them. When Jeremiah prophe-
sied, the Jews were guilty of the highest abominations q,
and yet they came regularly to the worship at the temple,
but without a reformation of their lives r . Hereupon the
prophet's message to them was, that if they continued in
this course, they might put their burnt- offer ings to their sacri-
fices, and eat thefash* ; they might even break through, and
not pretend to observe, the legal institutions for their burnt-
offerings t; for that God would not accept them for an
exact performance of one part of his law only, when what
he required of them was to obey his voice, and to walk in all
the ways that he had commanded them' u . And thus the de-
sign of Jeremiah, in the words before us, appears evidently
to be, not to suggest to the Jews that burnt-offerings and
sacrifices were originally no part of their religion, but to re-
monstrate to them, that sacrifice and offering was but one
part, and that a regularity of their lives and manners was
another; and that a due care not of one or either, but of
both these parts of their duty, was enjoined them, in the
general command given to them, to obey God's voice in
order to be his people. There remains to be considered,
3. a passage in Ezekiel x . Ezekiel represents that God gave
the Jews, first his statutes and his judgments, which if a man
do, he shall even live in them? ; and afterwards, because they
had not executed these judgments, but despised his statutes ,
that therefore he gave them statutes that were not good, and
judgments whereby they should not live 2 . The former of
these statutes and judgments are said to be the moral law,
and the commands of the ritual law are supposed to be the
latter a . But I would observe, I. That whatever the sta-

q Jerem. vii. 8, 9. them so to do, is only hinting to them

r Ver. id. that it was of no moment to be exact

8 Ver. 21. in their sacrifices, without amending

t The law of the burnt-offering was, their lives.

that it was none of it to be eaten, but u Jerem. vii. 23.

the whole burnt and consumed upon x Ezek. xx. 10.

the altar, so that if the Jews had done Y Ezek. xx. 1 1 .

what the prophet bids them ver. 21. z Ver. 24, 25.

they had acted contrary to the law for a Spencer, de Legib. Heb. 1. i. c. i.

the burnt-offering; and his directing . 2. c. 14. 3.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 117

tutes were, which are thus said to have been not good, what-
ever were the judgments, whereby they should not live, it ap-
pears evidently from the prophet, that they were not given
to that generation of men who received the ritual law, and
consequently the ritual law could not be any part of these
statutes. The prophet remarks that the Israelites, after
receiving the law, rebelled against God in the wilderness b ;
that God had said, he would pour out his fury upon them
to destroy them c ; but that for his name's sake he had not
executed this vengeance d ; yet, that he did determine not
to bring THEM into the land of Canaan 6 , though his eye
had spared them from destroying and making an end of
them f . And thus in five verses he sums up what had hap-
pened in God's dispensations to the Israelites, from the
giving the law, unto the punishment of their misbehaviour
at the return of their spies out of Canaan g, during which
interval, how oft did they provoke God h ! Yet many a time
turned Tie his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath 1 ,
until at length, though his eye spared them*, and he would
not kill all the people as one man\, which had indeed been to
destroy and make an end of them in the wilderness, yet he
lifted up his hand, that he would not bring them into the land
which he had given them n , but denounced against them, that
all those that had seen his glory and his miracles, and had
tempted him now ten times, and not hearkened to his voice,
should surely not see the land, but fall in the wilderness ; but
that their little ones should be brought into it . After this the
prophet proceeds to relate what happened to their children ;
that God said unto them, Walk ye not in the statutes of your
fathers but walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments, and
do them? : but the children rebelled against God% and be-
cause they had not executed his judgments, but had despised his

b Ezek. xx. 13. k Ezek. xx. 17.

c Ibid. 1 Numb. xiv. 15.

d Ver. 14. mEzek. xx. 17.

eVer. 15. n Ver. 15.

f Ver. 17. o Numb. xiv.

e Numb. xiv. P Ezek. xx. 18, 19.

h Psalm Ixxviii. 40. q Ver. 2 1 .
i Ver. 38.

118 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK XI.

statutes, therefore he gave them statutes that were not good, and
judgments whereby they should not live*. And thus it must
be undeniably plain, that the prophet could not, by the sta-
tutes not good, mean any part of the ritual law ; for the
whole law was given to the fathers of those whom the
prophet now speaks of; but these statutes were not given to
the fathers, but to their descendants. 3. If we go on, and
compare the narrative of the prophet with the history of
the Israelites, we shall see further, that the statutes and judg-
ments not good are so far from being any part of Moses's
law, that they were not given earlier than the times of the
judges. On the first day of the eleventh month of the
fortieth year after the exit from Egypt 8 , Moses, after he
had numbered the people in the plains of Moab by Jordan
near Jericho*, and found that there was not left a man of
those whom he had almost forty years before numbered in
the wilderness of Sinai, save Caleb and Joshua u , by the
command of God made a covenant with the Israelites in
the land of Moab, besides the covenant which he made
with them in Horeb x . The fathers, who had so often pro-
voked God, were now all dead; and here it was that God
said unto their children, Walk ye not in the statutes of your fa-
thers, neither observe their judgments, nor defile yourselves with
their idols but walk in my statutes, and keep my judgments,
and do them*. Here it was that God commanded them not
to be, as their fathers , a stubborn and rebellious generation, but
to set their hearts aright, and to have their spirits stedfast with
God z , for this was the purport of what Moses gave in
charge to them, that they might teach their children the same,
that it might be well with them, and that they and their chil-
dren might hear, and learn to fear the Lord their God, as long
as they lived in the land, whither they were going over Jor-
dan to possess it a . We do not find but that from this time
to the death of Moses, the Israelites were punctual in ob-
serving what he commanded; and, after Moses was dead,

r Ezek. xx. 24, 25. x Deut. xxix. i.

s Deut. i. 3. y Ezek. xx. 18, 19.

t Numb. xxvi. z p sa lm Ixxviii. 8.

u Ver. 64, 65. a Deut. xxxi. 12, 13.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 119

they served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days
of the elders that over-lived Joshua b : but when all that ge-
neration were gathered unto their fathers, then the children of
Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and followed other gods,
of the gods of the people that were round about them, and pro-
voked the Lord to anger, and served Baal and Ashtaroth c : so
that here the scene opens which Moses had forewarned
them of d , and which Ezekiel alludes to e ; and accordingly
what Ezekiel mentions as the punishments of these wicked-
nesses f , began now to come upon them. The prophet re-
marks, that God said he would pour out his fury upon them,
and accomplish his anger against them^; and agreeably
hereto we find, that the anger of the Lord was hot against
Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that
spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies
round about, so that they could not any longer stand before
their enemies. Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the
Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as
the Lord had sworn unto them h . The prophet observes, that
nevertheless God withdrew his hand 1 : he did not proceed
entirely to extirpate them; and thus the historian: Never-
theless the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them k :
many times indeed did he deliver them, but they went on to
provoke him with their behaviour ; so that he determined,
for their transgressing his covenant, and not hearkening
unto his voice, that he would not henceforth drive out any
from before them of the nations which Joshua left when he
died ' ; and hereby the Israelites became mingled with the
heathen, or, as the prophet expresses it, they were scattered
among the heathen, and dispersed through the countries^ ; they
had not a contiguous and united possession of the whole
land, but dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites,
and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites . And thus

b Joshua xxiv. 31. Judges ii. 7. i Ezek. xx. 22.

c Judges ii. 10 13. k Judges ii. 16.

d Deut. xxxi. 29. 1 Ver. 20, 21.

e Ezek. xx. 21. m Psalm cvi. 35.

*' Ibid. n Ezek. xx. 23.

S Ibid. o Judges iii. 5.
h Judges ii. 14, 15.

120 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

what preceded the giving the statutes that were not good,
brings us down to the days of the judges, and therefore
these statutes were not given earlier than these times. But,
3. let us examine what these statutes and judgments really
were, and when and how God gave them to the Israelites;
and in order hereto let us observe, i. that God does in no
wise give these statutes and judgments the appellation by
which he called the appointments he had made and designed
for his people : of these he says, I gave them my statutes, and
shewed them my judgments? : these were indeed God's laws,
intended for the use and observance of his people ; but of
the statutes not good, and judgments whereby they should not
live, he says, / gave them also statutes [not my statutes] and
judgments [not my judgments] whereby they should not live<\ ;
so that these statutes and judgments were not God's statutes,
or God's judgments, though they are said to have been
given by him. But, 2, the 26th verse suggests, that, in
giving them these statutes and judgments, God. polluted them
in their gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that
openeth the womb, that he might make them desolate: what
the prophet here means is fully suggested by himself in an-
other place. Thou hast slain my children, and delivered them,
to cause them to pass through the fire for them r : the fact was,
they had taken their sons and their daughters, and sacrificed
them to be devoured* ; or, as the Psalmist represents it, They
shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their
daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan * ; and
the institutions that directed such performances, these were
the statutes not good, these were the judgments whereby they
should not live; for these fully answer to the prophet's ac-
count : they polluted those who used them in their gifts; by
the observing them the land was polluted with blood, and the
people defiled with their own works 11 ; and they tended to make
them desolate, by the destruction of their offspring. And God
may be said to have given them these statutes, either because
he gave them up to their own hearts' lusts, to walk in their own

P Ezek. xx. ii. s Ezek. xvi. 20.

q Ver. 25. t Psalm cvi. 38.

r Ezek. xvi. 21. u Ver. 38, 39.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

counsels*, to learn these practices from their heathen neigh-
bours : thus God is said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart y,
when Pharaoh really hardened his own heart 2 ; and in like
manner to have given a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab's
prophets a , when in fact they prophesied out of their own
hearts b ; and followed their own spirit, when they had seen
nothing ; and in this sense the Chaldee Paraphrast took
the passage of Ezekiel d : or more emphatically, God may
be said to have given them these statutes, because 'for their
punishment he delivered them into the hands of their ene-
mies, and empowered those who hated them to rule over
them 6 . These their enemies might set up their abomina-
tions amongst them, and make Israel to sin, as their own
wicked kings did afterwards in divers reigns. They might
give them statutes such as those of Omri f , and by their
power over them influence and oblige them to the observ-
ance of them : and God may in a strong sense be said to
have given them these statutes, by his giving their enemies
power to impose them upon them. I have now fully consi-
dered this passage of Ezekiel, and perhaps have been too
large upon it; but I was willing to clear it as distinctly as
I was able, because great stress has been laid upon it. Dr.
Spencer imagined this text alone sufficient to support his
hypothesis ; but I cannot but think, if what has been of-
fered be fairly considered, no honest writer can ever cite it
again for that purpose. However, that I may leave no
seeming objection to any part of what I have offered, I
would further take notice :

I. Dr. Spencer imagines the 26th verse of the 2oth chapter
of Ezekiel, which we render, / polluted them in their own
gifts, in that they caused to pass through the fire all that openeth
the womb, that I might make them desolate, to refer, not to

x Psalm Lxxxi. 12. d Projeci eos, et tradidi eos in ma-

y Exod. iv. 21. vii. 3. ix. 12. x. i, num inimicorum suorum, et post con-

20, 27. xi. 10, &c. cupiscentiam suam insipientem abie-

z Exod. vii. 13, 22. viii. 15, 19, 32. runt, et fecerunt decreta non recta, et

ix. 7, 34. See vol. ii. b. ix. leges in quibus non vivetis. Targ. Jo-

a 2 Chron. xviii. 22. nath. in loc.

b Ezek. xiii. 2. e Psalm cvi. 41.

c Ver. 3. f Micah vi. 16.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XT.

their causing their children to pass through the fire to the
idols of Canaan, as I have above taken it ; but he supposes
it to relate to God's rejecting the firstborn of the Israelites
from the priesthood, and appointing the tribe of Levi to the
sacred offices in their stead s. He would translate the verse to
this purpose : / pronounced them polluted in their gifts, [i. e.
unfit to offer me any oblations,] in that 1 passed by all that
openeth the womb, in order to humble them, that they might
know that I am the Lord. I answer : This cannot be the
meaning of the text ; for the Levitical priesthood was in-
stituted, as I have remarked, in the days of the fathers ; but
the prophet here speaks of something done in the days, not
of the fathers, to whom the law was given, but of their
children, of a generation that arose after the appointing the
Levites to the sacred offices, and therefore cannot be here
supposed to speak of that appointment 11 . Farther; the ex-
pression here used [behanabir col peter racharn] does not signify
to pass by or reject the firstborn. The verb nabar, in the con-
jugation here used, does sometimes signify to set apart or
choose*, but cannot have, I think, the sense the learned
doctor would here give it. Maas DNO is the Hebrew verb for
to reject^, and would most probably have been the word
here used, if rejecting from the priesthood had been the
matter intended by the prophet 1 .

II. Another objection to what I have offered above may
arise from the 2ist and 23rd verses of the 2oth of Ezekiel.
The prophet may seem in them to hint, that God's anger
against the children was whilst they were in the wilderness,
and that it was in the wilderness that he lifted up his hand
against them, to scatter them among the heathen ; and if so,
their provoking God to this anger must have been before

Spenc. de Leg. Heb. 1. i. c. 8. . 2. textui immixtis, antecedentium, conse-

h Vid. quse sup. Chorus est erudi- quentiumque nexu, et scripturarum d\-

torum virorum, qui de prseceptis ce- KujXovxiff petitas. Vitringa Observat.

remonialibus haec intelligent, et re- Sac. 1. ii. c. i.

motione Israelitarum ab altari. Ego i Exod. xiii. 12.

vero libere profiteer huic opinioni nun- k Vid. i Sam. viii. 7. x. 19. xvi. i.

quam me potuisse consentire, ob ra- 2 Kings xviii. 20. Jer. vi. 30. xiv. 19.

tiones non leves sane et futiles, sed et in sexcent. al. loc.

solidas praegnantesque ex serie oratio- 1 Vid. Hos. iv. 6.

nis, Qpdfffus insolentia, verbis aliis

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 123

they entered Canaan, and therefore not so late as the time
I have fixed it to. I answer: i. the history of the Israel-
ites contained in Moses's books and those which follow, was
wrote long before Ezekiel prophesied ; and as his prophecy
could not alter what had been done, so the best interpreta-
tion of what he related about them must be that which
agrees to their history; and we must not invent facts, or
change their history to suit it to any thing contained in his
prophecy ; and, according to their history, the children's
provoking God was as I have above stated it. And thus
the Psalmist fixes it. After God had cast out the heathen be-
fore them, and divided them an inheritance by line, then it was
that the children tempted and provoked the most high God, and
kept not his testimonies, but turned buck, and dealt unfaithfully
like their father s m . But, 2. the threatenings of God against
the children of the Israelites, whenever they should provoke
him, were indeed pronounced to them by Moses in the wil-
derness before they entered Canaan 11 . 3. Perhaps this was
all that the prophet intended to express by the word, in the
wilderness, in the verses above cited. Then I said, I would
pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against
them in the wilderness. The words, in the wilderness, do not
hint the place where the anger was to be accomplished, but
rather refer to anger, and suggest the anger to be, as we
might almost say in English, the wilder ness -anger, or the
anger which God had threatened in the wilderness. Or, 4,
the word be midbar, in the wilderness, having occurred
twice before, after words the same that are used in these
two verses , I am apt to suspect that the transcribers, intent
upon what they had a little before written, might insert the
word again inadvertently in the 2ist and 23d verses, when
perhaps it was not there repeated in the original copy of
the prophecy of Ezekiel.

Moses having made intercession for the people after their
idolatry of the golden calf, at the command of God made
two new tables of stone, like unto those which he had
broken, and went up a second time with them to mount

m Psalm Ixxviii. 55 57. n See Deut. xxviii., &c. Ezek. xx. 13 15.

124 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

Sinai P. He continued again on the mount forty days and
forty nights, without eating bread or drinking water \
during which time he wrote, as God directed him, the ten
commandments upon the two tables'", and received the com-
mands set down in the 24th chapter of Exodus. After
the forty days, he came down from the mount with the two
tables in his hand, and gathered the congregation together,
and instructed them in what had been appointed to him 8 ,
and required them to make their offerings for erecting the
tabernacle t . In order to erect the tabernacle, he had been
commanded to tax every Israelite above twenty years old
half a shekel", or about fifteen pence of our money x . The
sum arising from this tax was appointed to be for the service
of the tabernacle Y; and we find that Moses used it for the
sockets of the sanctuary, and of the vail, and for hooks for
the pillars, and for their chapiters 2 . The number of those
who were taxed were 603550 men a ; and the sum arising
from assessing them half a shekel a man amounted to 100
talents, and 1775 shekels of Jewish money b ; so that a Jewish
talent consisted of 3000 shekels ; for from 603550 half she-
kels, or 301775 shekels, deduct an hundred times 3000, the
number of talents, and the remainder will be 1775, which is
the number of the remaining shekels over and above the
talents ; and the whole sum raised, at fifteen pence the half
shekel, amounts in English coin to 377 2 il. 175. 6d. This
sum therefore Moses first raised by the assessment, and after
he had collected it, he moved the people to a voluntary con-
tribution , as God had directed him d , which brought in a
sufficient quantity of all sorts of materials that were wanted,
to the full of what they could have occasion for 6 ; so that
Moses gave commandment to proclaim through the camp,

P Exodus xxxiv. it about 3$. See his Connect, vol. i. b.

q Ver. 28. iii. p. 196. ed. 8vo. Lond. 1725.

r Ibid. y Exodus xxx. 16.

s Ver. ii 27. z Exodus xxxviii. 25 28.

t Exodus xxxv. 4. a Ver. 26.

u Exodus xxx. 12 1 6. b Ver. 25.

x According to Brerewood the shekel c Exodus xxxv.
was a silver coin of about 2s. 6d. value d Ver. 2.
in our money. Dean Prideaux makes e Exodus xxxvi. 5.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 125

that the people should make no further offerings f . Bezaliel
and Aholiab, being nominated by a special designation from
God himself, began the tabernacles ; and in some months
against the end of the year, by their direction, and the assist-
ance of the hands employed under them h , the tabernacle
and its appurtenances, the table of shew-bread, the priests'
garments, the holy ointments, the golden candlestick, and
all the vessels and utensils for the service of the altar, were
finished'.

The marginal reference in our English Bibles at Exodus
xxx. 12. seems to hint, that this numbering the people for
the raising the tax for the tabernacle was the very same
with that mentioned Numbers i. 2 5. The number of the
poll appears indeed in each place to be to a man the same k ,
and this possibly might lead those who made the reference
to mistake, and think the people to have been in truth but
once numbered ; but it is evident, I . that the poll men-
tioned in the first chapter of Numbers was not taken until
the first day of the second month of the second year after
the exit from Egypt 1 . 2. The tabernacle was finished a
month earlier ; for it was erected on the first day of the
first month m . 3. The poll taken for raising the assessment
was before the tabernacle was finished ; for the silver which
the assessment raised was applied to the making some parts
of the tabernacle"; so that the poll for the assessment must
have preceded at least above a month earlier than that
which is mentioned in the first chapter of Numbers. 4. I
should imagine it some months earlier ; for surely the num-
bering and assessing the people preceded the free offering of
those who were willing , and was therefore before the
workmen began the tabernacle ; for when the persons em-
ployed in the work of the tabernacle found that the free
offerings had supplied as much of all sorts of materials as
were necessary, it was proclaimed through the camp, that no

f Exodus xxxvi. 6. 1 Numbers i. i.

Ch. xxxv. 30. xxxvi. I. m Exodus xl. 17.

h Ch. xxxvi. i. xxxix. 43. xl. 2. Ch. xxxviii. 27, 28.

i Ch. xxxix. 32 43. o Ch. xxxvi. 3.
k Ch. xxxviii. 26. Numb. i. 46.

126 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [flOOK XI.

one should offer any more P ; and therefore, had these volun-
tary offerings been made before the assessment, the assess-
ment would have been superfluous; but we find it was not
so, by the use made of the silver, which came in from it<i :
I should therefore think it most probable that Moses first
raised the assessment, then ordered the free-will offering,
and when the materials were collected, he delivered them to
the workmen, and appointed them to begin the tabernacle T ;
and, if he proceeded thus, the poll mentioned in the first
chapter of Numbers was near six months later than this
numbering and assessing the people ; for the tabernacle was
probably about five months in making, and the poll in
Numbers i. was taken a month after the finishing and erect-
ing the tabernacle as above. But it may seem very odd,
that two different polls of one and the same people, taken
thus at two different times, should agree exactly to a man :
one would rather imagine, that, in a growing people, the
number of deaths of the aged could not answer to the ad-
vance of young persons to the age they were polled at ; but
that in the space of one or of six or seven months, there must
be a considerable variation in so great a company as the camp
of the Israelites. And, if we duly attend to it, we find this
was the fact in the case before us. The number of men in-
deed in each poll is the same exactly, there being 603550
men in each of them 8 ; but then the same persons were not
allowed to be taken down in both the polls. To the first
poll came all the Israelites, from twenty years old and up-
wards^ but in the second poll the Levites were not num-
bered 11 . When the first poll was taken, I say, all the Israel-
ites were numbered, no tribe excepted ; for the Levites
were not then separated from the congregation x ; but at
the taking the second poll, the Levites were to be numbered
by themselves, and in another manner?. And thus, at taking
the first poll, the whole camp, Levites included, consisted of

P Exodus xxxvi. 6. x The separation of the Levites was

q Ch. xxxviii. 27, 28. at taking the second poll, Numb. iii.

r Ch. xxxvi. 3. 6. God having directed them not to

s Ch. xxxviii. 26. Numb. i. 46. be numbered in it, ch. i. 48, 49.

t Ch. xxx. 14. y Numb. i. 48. ii. 33.
Numb. i. 47.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

603550 men of and above twenty years old 2 ; at the second
poll the camp consisted of the like number of 603550 men a ,
of the age above mentioned, without any Levites in the
computation ; so that as many persons were grown up to
the age of twenty years in the space of time between tak-
ing the two polls, as the number of Levites of twenty years
old and upwards at the first poll amounted to, supposing,
what I think may be allowed, that no one person died in
the camp in this interval b .

On the first day of the first month of the second year
after the departure out of Egypt, i. e. about the middle of
our March, A. M. 2514, Moses reared up the tabernacle,
and placed the ark in it, and hung up the vail, and put the
table of shew- bread in its place, and set the bread in order
upon it, and put the candlestick in its place, and lighted
the lamps, and placed the golden altar of incense in the
tent before the vail, and he burnt sweet incense thereon,
and he set up the hanging at the door of the tabernacle, and
set the laver in its place, and reared up the court round
about the tabernacle and the altar, and set up the hanging
of the court-gate. This is what Moses is represented to
have done this day d : and all the parts of the tabernacle
being ready to be put together, and the ark and altar com-

z Exodus xxxviii. 26. 51 64. it may not seem improbable,
a Numb. i. 46. that the persons at this time near
b If we consider the whole body of twenty years old, but not completely
the Israelites as under the protection of so, should be sufficient to afford in five
a particular providence, and in hopes, or six months an addition to the
each person for himself and children, camp, not only equal to the number
of living to go into the promised land : of Levites of twenty years old and up-
if we add to this, that sickness and an wards, who were taken from it, and
early death were not frequent in these who were, I conceive, in number not
ages, but were thought judgments for above 8 or 10,000; see Numbers iv.
particular sins : see vol. ii. book ix. 48. but also to a farther number of
Numb, xxvii. 3. it will not be hard to aged men, if any such must be sup-
imagine five or six months to pass posed to have died in this interval,
without a death in the camp. And if c Exodus xl. 17 33.
we further reflect, that the younger d What is mentioned ver. 31, 32.
part of the camp were so numerous, as that Moses and Aaron and his sons
in about eight or nine and thirty years washed their hands and feet at the
to grow up into a body of 60 1 730 men laver, was not now done, but at such
of twenty years old and upwards, with- times as they went into the tent of the
out the Levites, and without any of congregation, or approached the altar,
the persons that were now twenty, ex- and is here set down only to tell the
cept Joshua and Caleb, to be num- use of the laver.
bered amongst them, Numb. xxvi.

128 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

pletely finished, fit for their respective places, all this may
very well be conceived to be done in the space of time
allotted to it, an hour or two before night. And when Moses
had thus raised the tabernacle, God was pleased to give the
people a visible and miraculous demonstration, that it was
erected according to his directions ; for a cloud covered the
tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled
the tabernacle 6 . And this visible evidence of the divine
presence continued from this time, until the Israelites had
finished their journeys through the wilderness ; for the cloud
of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it
by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all
their journeys. And when the cloud was taken up from over the
tabernacle, the children of Israel went onward in all their
journeys : but if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed
not till the day that it was taken up f . And thus God was
pleased to appoint himself, as it were, a visible dwelling
amongst men; for the tabernacle was built that it might
dwell amongst his peoples, that there might be a known
and determined place, where he would at all times vouchsafe
to meet them, and commune with them h , and give them a
sensible evidence of his being nigh unto them in all things,
that they might have occasion to call upon him for 1 ; and this
was the first structure that was erected in the world for the
purposes of religion k . The Israelites had a most strict charge
to destroy utterly all the places wherein the nations of Canaan
had served their gods, whether they were upon the high moun-
tains, or upon the hills, or under green trees ] ; but we do not
find that they had any buildings to erase ; rather all they had
to do was to overthrow their altars, to break their pillars, to cut
down and to burn their groves with fire, and to hew down
the graven images of their gods, and to destroy the names of
them out of the place where they had erected them m . In
after-times, when houses were built for the idolatrous

e Exodus xl. 34. i Deut. iv. 7.

fVer. 36, 37, 38. See Numb. ix. k See vol. ii. b.viii.
15 23. 1 Deut. xii. 2.

g Exodus xxv. 8. mVer. 3. v ii. 5. Exodus xxxiv. 13.

h Ver. 22. xxix. 43 45. xxiii. 24.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 129

worship, we find express mention of the demolishing them,
by the persons who engaged in reforming the people. Thus
Jehu brake down the house of Baal n , as did Jehoiada in like
manner : and the Israelites would unquestionably have
been as expressly commanded to demolish such structures,
had there been any, when they entered Canaan ; the hea-
then nations had no thought of building houses to their
gods, until after the Israelites had their tabernacle.

When the glory first covered the tabernacle, Moses could
not enter into it, because the cloud abode thereon, and the
glory of the Lord filled itP ; and it continued to do so most
probably for some days, during which the Lord called unto
Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congre-
gation^, and delivered to him, in an audible voice, the
several laws recorded in the first eight chapters of Leviticus ;
after receiving which, Moses proceeded to anoint the taber-
nacle, the altar, and all its vessels, and to consecrate Aaron
and his sons to the priests' offices r . Aaron first officiated as
high priest on the eighth day after the beginning of his
consecration 8 ; and his consecration might be begun on the
fifth day of the month ; so that he might enter upon his
ministry on the twelfth. We cannot suppose his consecra-
tion sooner, allowing a due space of time for the giving and
receiving and recording the laws above mentioned ; nor can
we imagine it later, upon account of celebrating the pass-
over, which was to be on the fourteenth, and which was
not celebrated until after the deaths of Nadab and Abihu;
for we find at the passover that there were certain men, who
were defiled by the dead body of a man, that they could not
keep the passover* ; and these I think must have been Mishael
and Elzaphan, who had carried Nadab and Abihu from
before the sanctuary out of the camp u ; so that their deaths
happened just before the passover, on the very first day of
Aaron's ministration ; for whilst he was ordering the bullock

n i Kings x. 27. r Leviticus viii.

2 Kings xi. 18. 2 Chron. xxiii. 17. a Leviticus ix. i 8.

P Exodus xl. 34, 35. * Numbers ix. 6.

Q Leviticus i. i. u Leviticus v. 4.

180 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

and the ram for the peace-offering 31 , when the fire came out
from before the Lord, and consumed the burnt-offering and
fat upon the altar y, Nadab and Abihu, two of Aaron's sons,
took each of them a censer, and put fire therein, and put
incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord,
which he commanded them not ; and there went out fire
from before the Lord, and struck them dead 2 . This unhappy
accident could not but occasion some interruption in the
ministration ; Aaron and his two other sons were un-
doubtedly affected with it; but Moses applied to them, and
required them to suppress their grief for the calamity, and
not to accompany the dead bodies out of the tabernacle,
lest the displeasure of God should arise against them a . Aa-
ron's heart seems here to have almost sunk within him ;
and, I imagine, he would have taken some refreshment to
support his spirits against the load of sorrow that now pressed
heavy upon him, and that this occasioned the command now
given him, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy
sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congrega-
tion, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your
generations*. Moses ordered the dead bodies of Nadab and
Abihu to be carried out of the tabernacle and out of the
camp c , and then called upon Aaron and his sons that were
left to finish the day's service d ; but upon inquiry he found
that the sin-offering, which ought to have been eaten by the
priests in the holy place 6 , was burnt and consumed f : he re-
presented to the sons of Aaron their mistake in this matters;
but Aaron made excuse for it, and alleged, that such judg-
ments had been inflicted that day, as to gitfe him reason to
doubt whether it might be proper for him to finish the
atonement. Aaron said unto Moses, Behold, this day have
they offered their sin-offering and their burnt-offering before the
Lord; and such things have befallen me : and if I had eaten

x Leviticus ix. 18. c Leviticus x. 4.

y Ver. 24. d Ver. 12 15.

z Leviticus x. i, 2. e Ch. vi. 26.

a Ver. 6, 7. f Ch. x. 16.

b Ver. 8,9. * Ver. 1 7.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

131

the sin-offering to day, should it have been accepted in the sight
of the Lord h ? Some of the commentators represent that
Aaron thought himself, upon account of the grief and con-
cern he was then under, not to be in a fit disposition to eat
the sin-offering ' ; others, that it would have been indecorous
for him to have done it k ; but they do not consider the
charge which Moses had given him. The Hebrew text sug-
gests what I have hinted to be Aaron's apology: Aaron
said to Moses, Behold, this day have they offered their sin-offer-
ing and their burnt-offering, [rpbO TIN rtiMhpffl 1 ,] vattikre-
nah oti caelleh; the verb vattikrenah is the plural feminine,
and refers to the offerings ; and what Aaron suggests is, that
the ministrations already performed had called down upon
him the judgments that had been inflicted, and that for this
reason he feared they had profaned the services of the day ;
and therefore that he did not presume to go on to finish
them, but had burnt the goat, instead of reserving it to be
eaten, according to the orders which he should have ob-
served, if their officiating had been so conducted as to give
him reason to think it would have been accepted in the
sight of the Lord. This indeed seems a reasonable excuse,
and we find Moses was contented with it m , and pressed him
no further to finish the remaining offices of that day's ser-
vice.

It may be here asked, what so great crime were Nadab
and Abihu guilty of, that they paid so dear a price as to
lose their lives by an immediate vengeance? But the an-
swer is easy ; the great end and purpose of the Mosaical dis-
pensation was to separate unto God a chosen people, who
should be careful to obey his voice indeed, and who, instead
of being like other nations, following and practising, as parts
of their religion, what men might invent, set up, and think
proper and reasonable, should diligently and strictly keep to

h Leviticus x. 19. carne victimse, in qua offerenda duos

i They comment upon the words filios subito amiserat. Cleric. Comment.

thus; Agnosco quidem comedendum fu- in loc.

isse et cum latitia, sed qm potui lalari? 1 The verb ip in the conjugation

malui igitur conoivium negligere, quam here used has this sense, Jer. xxxii. 23.

moestus inire. Vid. Pool. Synops. in loc. m Leviticus x. 20.
k Indecorum fuisset patrem convivari

VOL. II. TT

CONNECTION OF THE SACKED [BOOK XI.

what God had enjoined, without turning therefrom to the
right hand or to the left, or without adding to the word
which was commanded them, or diminishing aught from it.
But herein these young men greatly failed ; God had as yet
given no law for the offering incense in censers ; all that had
been commanded about it was, that Aaron should burn it
upon the altar of incense every morning and every even-
ing" : afterwards he received further directions ; so that
these men took upon them to begin and introduce a service
into religion, which was not appointed, they offered what
the Lord commanded them not P , and this, if it had been suf-
fered, would have opened a door to great irregularities, and
the Jewish religion would in a little time have been, not
what God had directed, but have abounded in many human
inventions added to it. Aaron and his sons were sanctified to
minister in the priest's office*, for this end, that they should
remember the commandments of the Lord to do them, not that
they should seek after their own heart r . They could not have
taken upon themselves the offices of their priesthood, if they
had not been called of God to them 3 ; and as they were called
of God to them, it was their indispensable duty to be faith-
ful to him that appointed them in all his house* , in every part
of the dispensation committed to them. This, said Moses, is
that which the Lord spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them
that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glo-
rified^. They then only sanctified and glorified God, when
they dispensed to his people, as parts of his religion, what
he had commanded : but when they varied from it, or per-
formed or enjoined, as part of it, what he commanded not,
then they assumed to themselves a power that belonged not
to them ; then they spake and acted of themselves ; and he
that in these points speakeih of himself, seeketh not God's but
his own glory*.

God had directed, that the Israelites should keep the pass-

im Exodus xxx. 7. s Hebrews v. 4.

o Leviticus xvi. i 12. t Hebrews iii. 2.

P Leviticus x. i. u Leviticus x. 3.

<i Exodus xxix. 44. x.Johnvii. 18.
r Numbers xv. 39.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 133

over at its appointed season y; and accordingly they prepared
for it against the fourteenth day of the month at even, in
order to observe it according to the rites of it z : but on the
fourteenth day there arose a doubt about the persons who
had touched the dead bodies of Nadab and Abihu, whether
they were fit to keep the passover a ; Moses inquired of God
about them, and received an order, that all persons hindered
by such an accident, or that were in a journey, should keep
the passover a month after their brethren b . We have no
account of any thing done more, until the first day of the
second month; so that we have here sixteen days interval,
and in this space, I imagine, the laws recorded in Leviticus,
from the beginning of the nth chapter to the end of that
Book, were given, except the laws contained in the three
last chapters; for these were given to Moses, not at the
door of the tabernacle, but upon the mount . The son of
Shelomith, the daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan, was
stoned for cursing and blaspheming about this time d .

On the first day of the second month, A. M. 2514, Moses
was commanded to take the number of the congregation by
a poll of every male, of twenty years old and upwards 6 ,
excepting the Levites, who were not to be here numbered f :
and, in order to the taking this poll, twelve persons were
named to be princes of the tribes of their fathers g; and
they assembled their tribes, and gave in upon this first day
of the month, each the names and number of the persons in
the tribe he was set over h . After this Moses received a com-
mand to appoint the order, in which the host of the Israel-
ites was to march and encamp 1 . In the next place he was
directed to take the number of the Levites, and to appoint
to their several families their respective services, and to set
apart the whole tribe for the ministry of the tabernacle k . In
the more ancient times, the firstborn of every family was

7 Numbers ix. i, 2. e Numbers i. i, 2, 3.

z Ver. 6. f Ver. 49.

a lbid. eVer. 4 17.

bVer.io, 11. h Ver. 1 8.

c Numbers xxv. i. xxvi. 46. xxvii. i Numbers ii.

34- k Numbers iii.
d Leviticus xxiv. 10.

K 2

CONNECTION OF THE SACKED [BOOK XT.

to be the minister of religion i; but in the Jewish institution
God thought fit to dismiss the firstborn from this service, and
to direct the Levites to be dedicated to him instead of them m -
As many as there were Levites, over and above the firstborn
of the Levites, who, by being the firstborn, were before this
institution holy unto the Lord, so many of the firstborn of the
other tribes were discharged from attending upon the service
of the tabernacle ; and accordingly, there being twenty and
two thousand Levites", these were accepted instead of so many
of the firstborn males of the children of Israel. The whole
number of the firstborn of the Israelites were twenty-two thou-
sand two hundred threescore and thirteen : and the whole
number of the Levites were, of the sons of Gershon, seven
thousand five hundred?; of the sons of Kohath, eight thou-
sand six hundred 9; of the sons of Merari, six thousand two
hundred r ; in all twenty-two thousand three hundred; and
yet we are told that there were two hundred threescore
and thirteen of the firstborn of the children of Israel more
than the Levites s , that is, more than there were Levites to
be accepted instead of them : but this is a difficulty easy to
be accounted for; for of the Levites many were the first-
born of their families, namely, three hundred of them; so
that there remained twenty-two thousand only, who were
not firstborn, and might therefore be accepted instead of
the firstborn of the other tribes ; and thus we must under-
stand the 39th verse of the third chapter of Numbers. All that
were numbered of the Levites, which Moses and Aaron num-
bered at the commandment of the Lord, throughout their fami-
lies, all the males from a month old and upward, were twenty
and two thousand*. All that were numbered, i. e. in order to
be taken instead of the firstborn, were so many; for if the
firstborn Levites be included, if the sum of the whole tribe
be taken, they amount to three hundred more, as any one
may see by putting together the several sums of the three

l See vol. i. book v. 1 Numbers iii. 28.

m Numbers iii. 12. r Ver. 34.

n Ver. 39. s Ver. 46.

o Ver. 43. t Ver. 39.
P Ver. 22.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 135

families"; but there being three hundred firstborn Levites,
and twenty-two thousand two hundred threescore and thir-
teen firstborn Israelites of the other tribes, there would
indeed remain two hundred threescore and thirteen first-
born more than there were Levites to answer them; and
therefore for these God ordered five shekels of the sanctuary
apiece to be taken in lieu of each of them x . The laws
mentioned in the 5th and 6th and 8th chapters of Num-
bers were given about this time, and the Levites were con-
secrated to their ministry according to all that the Lord had
commandedy; and when all this was done, and the taber-
nacle hereby fully set up z , all its officers and ministers
being duly appointed, the princes of the tribes made their
offerings a : the princes offered each on a day by himself b ;
so that they were twelve days bringing in their respective
offerings. The camp began to march on the twentieth
day c ; the offerings were therefore over probably a day or
two before the twentieth, and must therefore have begun
on the fifth or sixth day; and consequently what I have
mentioned, as previous to the princes' offerings, from the
polling the people to the finishing the consecration of the
Levites, took up four or five days About the eighteenth
day of the month, Moses had two silver trumpets made d , for
the calling of an assembly 6 , or to summon to a meeting the
heads of the congregation f , or for the blowing an alarm
for marching the campg; and on the twentieth day the
cloud was taken off from the tabernacle, and the Israelites
prepared to march in due order h , and by the direction of
the cloud they journeyed three days together from the wil-
derness of Sinai into the wilderness of Paran 1 . Before they
began their march, Moses asked Hobab the son of Jethro
his father-in-law to continue with them : but he was de-

u Numbers iii. 22, 28, 34. b Numbers vii. 1 1.

x The shekel of the sanctuary is, as c Numbers x. u.

I have before computed it, about 2s. d Ver. 2.

6d. of our money ; so that they paid e Ibid,

each man about 125. 6rf. for his re- fVer. 4.

demption. g Ver. 5.

y Numbers viii. 20. h Ver. 1 1 .

z Numbers, vii. i. i Ver, 12.

a Ver. 2.

136 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

sirous to return into his own land and to his kindred k :
Moses was unwilling to part with him, and represented how
serviceable he might be to them in their travels 1 , and made
him such offers as induced him not to leave them m ; and
accordingly we find his posterity settled afterwards in Ca-
naan".

Upon the cloud's resting in the wilderness of Paran, the
camp being thereby stopped from marching any further,
the Israelites grew uneasy , and complained, perhaps for
their not being carried directly into Canaan. Their uneasi-
ness was offensive to God, and he destroyed many of them
with fire from heaven foritP; but upon Moses's prayer the
fire ceased^. In a little time they murmured at their hav-
ing nothing to eat but manna, and were very vexatious to
Moses in soliciting him to obtain them some other diet r .
Moses, quite tired out with their restless humours, begged
earnestly that God would be pleased, some way or other, to
ease him of the great burthen which lay upon him 8 : here-
upon God ordered him to choose seventy elders out of the
officers, whom he had employed over the people 1 . After
Moses had chosen them, God was pleased to give them a
portion of his spirit to qualify them for the employment
they were designed for" : sixty-eight of the seventy came
up unto Moses to the tabernacle, upon their being chosen :
but Eldad and Medad, two whom Moses had nominated,
seemed desirous to decline the honour that was offered them,
esteeming themselves perhaps not equal to the undertaking ;

k There appears some little confu- says expressly, that Jethro went his
sion in the Scripture accounts of Je- way into his own land. Exod. xviii.
thro, from the different names given 27. Hobab indeed went on with
him in different places; but it is no Moses, but not Hobab, Moses's father-
unusual thing to find many names in-law, which had been Jethro ; but
given to one and the same person. Hobab the son of Moses's father-in-
From Numbers x. 29. it appears that law, or the son of Jethro.
Jethro was called Raguel ; and from 1 Numbers x. 3 1 .
Judges iv. ii. that he was also called m Ver. 32.
Hobab. He had a son also, whose n Judges i. 16.
name was Hobab, Numbers x. 29. Numbers xi. T.
but there is no room for a careful P Ibid,
reader to mistake the one Hobab for q Ver. 2.
the other. Some learned writers have r Ver. 4 6.
indeed imagined that Jethro did not s Ver. n 15.
leave Moses, but went with him t Ver. 16.
through the wilderness; but Moses u Ver. 17.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 137

and therefore they went not out unto the tabernacle, but
remained in the camp x : but God was pleased to convince
them, that he could readily give abilities for any employ-
ment to which he should call them ; and therefore he en-
abled them to prophesy in the camp, as the others did at
the tabernacle y. Eldad and Medad's prophesying in the
camp was soon reported to Moses, and Joshua the son of
Nun thought it would be expedient for Moses to forbid
them 2 , imagining it would lessen Moses's authority, if these
two men, who, by their not coming up to the tabernacle,
might appear to have no commission under him, should be
thought to have, and be allowed to use this privilege. But
Moses, having no aim to his own glory, remonstrated, that
he wished all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the
Lord would put his spirit upon them*. This would have truly
eased his burthen ; for, if God would have thus immediately
revealed his will to every Israelite, all Moses's labour would
have been at an end, and the people, from the highest to the
lowest, would all have known what they were to do as well
as himself ; and he, not seeking his own honour, nor having
at heart his private interest, but sincerely desiring to be
faithful to him that appointed him b , would have sincerely re-
joiced to see the purpose and design of God thus effectually
taking place amongst his people. The elders went down
with Moses into the camp , and God sent a wind, which
brought great quantities of quails d , which the people took

x Numb. xi. 26. least, gathered ten homers, ver. 32. a

7 Ibid. surprising quantity, if an homer be, as

z Ver. 27, 28. is by some computed, five of our

a Ver. 29. English bushels and a half. But per-

b Heb. iii. 2. haps the word we here render homers,

c Numb, xi. 30. was not intended to signify in this

d Ver. 31. Our English version re- place the particular Jewish measure

presents the quails to have lain round so called, but should rather have been

about the camp as it were two cubits rendered heaps in general, without de-

[or a yard] high : but there is no fining the quantity which each heap

word in the Hebrew text for the num- contained. It is thus used Exod. viii.

ber two: the Hebrew word n*no*O 14. and we may well imagine each

signifies, a* it were cubits high, ex- man to gather ten heaps ; but five and

pressing no determinate measure, but fifty bushels a man does not seem a

in general a considerable height. In quantity likely to have been gathered

like manner we say, he that gathered by them.

138 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

and dried, and salted for their eating 6 . But though God
sent them this food upon their impatience, yet he pu-
nished them for their mutinous temper f , and by a plague
cut off those that had required this provision ; they called the
name of the place Kibroth Hattaavah, because they buried
the people here that lusted s. After the plague ceased, they
journeyed hence to Hazeroth h .

At Hazeroth, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses for
his having married a foreigner, a woman, who was not of
the children of his people; for be had married the daughter
of Jethro the Cushite, or Arabian . Moses was very meek,
above all the men which were upon the face of the earth* ; and
the exceeding goodness of his temper led Miriam and Aaron
most warmly to oppose him upon this subject. There ap-
pears to have been no law given which could directly
affect the case of Moses : whether Aaron inferred his mar-
riage to be wrong, from what had been enjoined the priests 1 ,
thinking Moses obliged in every respect to as great strict-
ness as they could be, I cannot say: however, he and Mi-
riam would admit of no plea in Moses's favour; but con-
tended, that they knew as well as he what was lawful and
what was not m ; for that God had revealed his will to them
as well as to him. This dispute might have had a very un-
happy effect upon the people ; for if the persons, whom they
all knew to have been favoured with immediate revelations
of God's will, had thus evidently differed and contradicted
one another about it, how should the congregation know by
whom to be directed? Parties and divisions would have
arisen from such contests : but God was pleased to interpose
upon this occasion. The Lord came down in the pillar of the
cloud to the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Mi-
riam 11 , and observed to them, that he had never revealed

e This management of quails, in order h Numb. xi. 35.

to preserve them, was usual amongst i Numb. xii. i. See vol. i. b. iii.

the heathens. Athen. Deipnos. 1. ix. c. k Numb. xii. 3.

IT. 1 Leviticus xxi. 14.

f Ps. cvi. 15. Ixxviii. 30, 31. Numb. mNumb. xii. 2.

xi. 33. n Ver. 5.

g Numb. xi. 34.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 139

his will to either of them, or to any others in so extraor-
dinary a manner, as he had done to Moses , and that there-
fore they ought to have been afraid to speak against and
contradict him?; and, in order to justify Moses to the whole
congregation, Miriam was struck with a leprosy, and or-
dered to be put out of the camp for seven days 1 ; after that,
by Moses's prayer for her, she was recovered r : upon her
readmission into the camp, the Israelites removed from Ha-
zeroth further on, in the wilderness of Paran 5 .

From the place they were now encamped at, Moses by
God's command sent twelve persons, having chosen one out
of each tribe, to go as spies into the land of Canaan*, to take
a view, and to bring an account of the land and its inhabit-
ants. The twelve persons appointed took their journey, and
went over the land, and in forty days came back to the
camp again". At their return the congregation was sum-
moned to receive their report x , which, as to the fruitfulness
of the land, was very agreeable ; but they represented the
large stature and strength of the inhabitants, so as to intimi-
date the people, and to induce them to think themselves in
no wise able to conquer ity. The camp grew into a great
ferment upon this representation, and a false report of the
goodness of the country gat about, and increased the dis-
content, notwithstanding all that Caleb, who had been one
of the spies, could offer to appease it z ; and at last such a
spirit was raised amongst the people, that they were for
making themselves a captain to lead them back to Egypt a .
Moses and Aaron expressed the deepest concern at this
strange infatuation 5 , and Caleb and Joshua made the utmost
efforts to reduce the camp to a better temper. They re-
monstrated, that the land was certainly exceeding good;
that it was God's design to give it to them ; that since God
was for them, the strength of the Canaanites against them
was not to be feared; that to return to Egypt would be a

o Numb. xii. 6 8. Numb. xiii. 21 25.

P Ibid. x Ver. 26 31.

q Ver. 10,14. y Ver. 27 31.

r Ver. 13. z Ver. 3033.

s Ver. 1 6. a Ch. xiv. 4.

* Numb. xiii. 2. b Ver. 5.

140 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

rebellion against God, who had so miraculously delivered,
preserved, and appointed them for this undertaking . What
they said was far from having the designed effect: the
people were rather transported by it to greater fury, and were
for having Joshua and Caleb immediately stoned d : but the
glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congre-
gation, in a manner visible to all the people 6 . Such an ob-
stinacy as they were now guilty of was an exceeding great
sin against God ; however, Moses was admitted to intercede,
that the whole congregation should not be destroyed f : but
God determined, that, for this offence, none of the persons
who had seen his glory and his miracles done in Egypt, and
had thus rebelled against him, should come into the land of
Canaan ; for their entrance into the land should now be
deferred until forty years were expired from their exit out of
Egypt ; and that before that time all the generation that were
twenty years old and upwards, when Moses and Aaron num-
bered them after the exit out of Egypt, except Caleb and
Joshua, should die in the wilderness 11 . Moses told the people
these things, at the hearing whereof they mourned greatly'.
They were now desirous to attempt to enter the land ; but
Moses cautioned them against it k , assuring them, that God
would not now give them success : however they would
march ; but the Amalekites and Canaanites smote them, and
discomfited them unto Hormah 1 . The laws contained in
the 1 5th chapter of Numbers seem to have been given within
the forty days the spies were travelling over the land of Ca-
naan ; and about this time I imagine the man to have been
stoned who gathered sticks on the sabbath-day m .

There is a passage in the speech of Joshua and Caleb
upon which the Jewish Rabbins founded a most whimsical
conceit. Joshua and Caleb represent, that, as to the Ca-
riaanites, their defence was departed from them 11 : the Hebrew

c Numb. xiv. 6 9. i Numb. xiv. 39.

d Ver. 10. k Ver. 41, 42, 43.

e Ibid. 1 Ver. 44, 45.

{ Ver. i r 20. m Ch. xv. 32 36.

5 Ver. 22, 23. " Ch. xiv. 9.
h Ver. 2238.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 141

word is D 72 [tzillam] their shadow, upon which the Rab-
bins thus comment : They say, that on the night of the
seventh day of the seventh month, God shewed his people
by the moonshine what should happen to them in the year
following . They pretended, that if any one went out into
the moonshine in that night in a proper dress, he would see
the shadow of his body diverse, according to what would
happen to him. The shadow of his hand held out would
want a finger, if he was to lose a friend that year : his right-
hand would cast no shadow, if his son was to die ; his left-
hand, if his daughter: if the person himself was to die,
then his shadow would appear an head, or perhaps his body
cast no shadow at all, his shadow being departed from Mm. It
would be trifling to endeavour to shew that Caleb and
Joshua intended nothing of this sort. The use of the word
shadow for protection is an easy metaphor. The strength
of the Israelites was thought by Joshua and Caleb to be the
Lord's being with them, and under this consideration they
looked upon the Canaanites as deserted of God, and there-
fore unable to bear up against them; and this was the
whole of what they endeavoured to represent to the people :
but no expression of Scripture can be so clear and express,
but that superstition may turn it to fancy and fable. The
Greeks had a whim about the shadow of those who entered
the temple of the Arcadian Jupiter p , not altogether unlike
this fiction of the Rabbins; and the Monkish tale, which
some of our vulgar people can still tell of their shadow in the
night of St. Mark's festival, was perhaps derived from it.

Moses was ordered to lead the Israelites back towards
the Red sea again i; and after their unsuccessful attempt
against the Canaanites 1 ", they began their retreat. We hear
but little more of them for about thirty-seven years ; during
which time they marched up and down the wilderness, and
made seventeen encampments 8 , from their leaving Rithmah
in the wilderness of Paran*, to their coming to Kadesh in the

Buxtorf. Synagog. Judaic, c. 16. Q Numb. xiv. 25.

p. 363. ed. Hanov. 1622. r Ver. 44,45.

P f6iro/j.iros <|>Vj(ras, rovs fls rj> rov s Ch. xxxiii. 19 36.

Atbs &fiaTov fy,aj/Tas KO.T 'Ap/ca5av a- * Compare Numbers xii. 1 6. with

ffKtovsyiyvfo-Qai. Vid. Poly b. Hist. 1. xvi. Numb, xxxiii. 18.
c. n.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

wilderness of Zin u . Their being obliged to make this retreat,
and the deferring their entrance into Canaan, raised great
discontents amongst them, and very probably occasioned the
rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, which happened
about this time : two hundred and fifty princes of the
assembly were concerned in it x , and many thousands of the
people, as may be imagined from the number of those who
perished by the plague y, were swallowed up in the earth 2 ,
or consumed by the fire a : the heads of the conspiracy were
Korah, a Levite, Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab,
and On, the son of Peleth, of the tribe of Eeuben. They
contended, that there was no reason for so great a subjection
to, and dependence upon, Moses and Aaron b ; that the
priesthood ought not to have been appropriated to Aaron
and his family ; for that all the congregation was holy, every
one of them, and the Lord amongst them c ; and they remon-
strated against Moses, that he had brought them out of
Egypt, a very plentiful country; that he had no real inten-
tion ever to bring them into Canaan; that he designed
only to carry them about, through innumerable difficulties,
until he could inure them to servitude, and make himself
altogether a prince over them d ; that to deny this to be his
aim, would suppose the people to have no eyes to see the
situation of their affairs, and the prospects that were before
them e . Moses had by express command from God de-
nounced to the congregation, that not one of them, except
Caleb and Joshua, should enter into Canaan; that all the
rest of them, who were above twenty-years old, when they
were polled after their coming out of Egypt, should die in
the wilderness, and the younger generation only should
come into the land f ; and this had put them all into so great
a ferment, that even a miraculous interposition of the di-
vine power was not immediately sufficient to subdue the
spirit of their rebellion; for we read, that on the morrow

u Numb, xxxiii. 26. b Numb. xvi. 3.

x Numb. xvi. i, 2. c Ibid.

* Ver. 49. d Ver. 3, 13.

z Ver. 32. e Ver. 14.

a Ver. 35. f Ch. xiv. 2833.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

after the earth had swallowed up Dathan and Abiram, and
all that belonged to thems, after Korah and his company
were consumed with fire from the Lord h , all the congrega-
tion murmured against Moses and against Aaron, and accused
them of having killed the Lord's people 1 : but hereupon
God sent a plague amongst them, and took off fourteen
thousand by it k , and also gave them a further evidence by
the blossoming of Aaron's rod, that he was the person
whom God had appointed to be priest for his people 1 . After
the punishment of the plague, and the testimony of the
further miracle in Aaron's rod, their opposition ceased m ;
Aaron's rod was by divine command laid up in the taber-
nacle in memory of this miraculous confirmation of his
priesthood : and the people expressed themselves convinced,
that whoever presumed to intrude into the service of the
tabernacle would be pursued by divine vengeance unto
death . The laws mentioned in the i8th and 19th chapters
of Numbers were given about this time.

Whilst the Israelites were in the wilderness, some writers
imagine that Sesostris was king of Egypt, and that he raised
a powerful army, and conquered a great part of the then
known world. They suppose him the son of Pharaoh, who
in pursuit of the Israelites was drowned in the Red sea :
archbishop Usher was of this opinion p , and the late learned
bishop Cumberland endeavours to support it*. The sub-
stance of what he argues upon the subject amounts to,
i . That Sesostris was the brother of the Grecian Danaus ;
and therefore, since Danaus is confessed to have lived about
the times of Moses r , that Sesostris must be likewise placed in
the same age. 2. That, according to the testimony of an-
cient writers, Sesostris was the son of Amenophis, the Pha-
raoh who was drowned in the Red sea. If indeed either of
these assertions can be supported, Sesostris must be placed in
these times : but if both these arguments may be refuted,

S Numb. xvi. 32. n Numb. xvii. 10.

h Ver. 35. o Ibid.

1 Ver. 41. P Annals, A. M. 2522.

k Ver. 49. q Sanchoniatho. sect. iv. p. 387.

1 Ch. xvii. r See vol. ii. b. viii.

Ibid.

144 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK XI.

Aristotle's general opinion, cited by the learned bishop, that
Sesostris lived before Minos 8 , or Apollonius's imagining
him to have planted colonies in Colchis before the Argo-
nautic expedition 1 , or Pliny's hinting him to have lived
before the Trojan war, will be of no great weight ; for it is
known that very considerable writers have mistaken the
true time of the reign of Sesostris".

i. Bishop Cumberland contends, that Danaus and Se-
sostris were brothers : but a supposed citation from Manetho
in Josephus is the only proof of this fraternity x . Manetho
is supposed to have said, that Sethosis was called JEgyptus,
and that Armais his brother was Danaus. I must confess,
I suspect the passage : the words cited seem to me to be not
ManethoX but Josephus'sy. Josephus, after having set
down a large citation from Manetho, adds, what I conceive
he inferred from him to be true : and I the rather think so,
because nothing, that comes up to what is here cited, ap-
pears in the remains of Manetho, as transmitted to us by
either Africanus or Eusebius, though they have both of
them given us the list of kings cited by Josephus, and one
of them some words of Manetho, from which Josephus
might probably make his inference. Africanus transmits to
us the series of kings, but has not remarked any relation be-
tween any two of them z : but Eusebius, at the name of
Armes, or Armais, calls him also Danaus, and records that
he reigned in Egypt five years, and then fled out of the
kingdom from his brother ^Egyptus, and went to Greece,
and reigned at Argos a ; so that from Eusebius it looks pro-
bable, that Manetho had hinted Danaus and ^Egyptus to
be brothers. Josephus imagined ^Egyptus and Sethosis to be
one and the same person, and hence concluded, that Mane-
tho had suggested Danaus and Sethosis to be so related:
this seems to me to be the foundation of what is cited in
and from Josephus. That Danaus was indeed the brother

s Arist. Polit. 1. vii. c. 10. yap '6ri & /j.ev 2e0co<ns &caAetro AtyvTrros,

t Apollon. Argonautic. 1. iv. 'Ap/j.ats 5e 6 a8<-\(f>bs avrov Aava6s.

u See pref. to vol. ii. z Vid. Syncell. Chronograph, p. 72.

x Josephus contra Apion. lib. i. cap. ed. Par. 1652.

j^. a Id. p. 73. Euseb. Chron. p. 16. ed.

y The words in Josephus are, \tyei Seal. Amst. 1658.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 145

of JEgyptus, may be proved from many ancient writers b :
but it appears evident, from divers circumstances recorded
concerning each of them, that ^Egyptus and Sesostris were
not the same person. Belus the son of Neptune and Libya
married Anchinoe daughter of Nilus, and had two sons by
her, JEgyptus and Danaus c : thus it appears that these two
persons were brothers : but if we pursue the history of
jEgyptus, we may evidently see that he and Sesostris were
not the same person. ^Egyptus had fifty sons, as Danaus
had fifty daughter s d ; but Sesostris had but six children 6 .
./Egyptus was indeed treacherously dealt with by his bro-
ther Danaus, and so was Sesostris by a brother; but in a
manner very different. It is a known story, how the fifty
daughters of Danaus were married, each of them to a son
of JEgyptus, and how all of them, except one, killed their
husbands, by the order of Danaus their father : thus Da-
naus attempted to have his brother's family extinct f . But
the attempt upon Sesostris made by his brother was of an-
other sort : at Sesostris's return home from his conquests,
his brother invited him, his wife and children, to an en-
tertainment, and fired the house where he received them,
with design to burn themS. Sesostris enjoyed himself in
Egypt after his conquests many years in peace, and died in
his own country, and was succeeded in his kingdom by his
son h : but jEgyptus the brother of Danaus was an exile
from Egypt as well as Danaus, and died and was buried in
Achaia in Greece'; and his only surviving son Lynceus
never was king of Egypt, but succeeded Danaus in the
kingdom of Argos k , and was buried in that country in
the same tomb with Hypermnestra his wife 1 . And thus
-ZEgyptus and Sesostris were two different persons, the cir-
cumstances of whose lives, deaths, and children, will in no

b Apollodor. 1. ii. c. i. Chron. Alex. f Apollodor. Eustath. et Didym. in

Cedren. 1. i. Euseb. in Chronic, ib. loc. sup. citat. Pausan. in Corinthiacis.

Prideaux in Not. Historic, ad Chron. S Diodor. Sic. 1. i. c. 57. Herodot.

marmor. Ep. ix. 1. ii. c. 107.

R Apollod. 1. ii. c. i. Not. Eustath. h Diodor. ubi sup. et c. 59. Herodot.

et Didymi in Homer. II. a. 42. 1. ii. c. n r.

d lid. ibid. Pausan. in Corinthiac. c. i Pausan. in Achaic. c. 22.

25. k Id. in Corinth, c. 16.

e Herodot. 1. ii. c. 107. l Id. ibid, et c. 21.

146 CONNECTION OF THE SACREl) [HOOK XI.

wise coincide, but are very diverse from one another; and
therefore it cannot be conclusive to argue Danaus to have
been brother of Sesostris, because Danaus and jEgyptus are
recorded to have been thus related. Diodorus Siculus and
Herodotus are very large in their accounts of Sesostris m ,
and do both of them minutely mention the circumstances
of his brother's treachery 11 ; but they neither of them hint
Danaus to have been his brother. Danaus lived about the
times of Moses , and consequently JEgyptus in the same
age ; but as JEgyptus appears not to have been Sesostris,
the fraternity between JEgyptus and Danaus can have no
effect towards proving the time of Sesostris's reign.

II. Bishop Cumberland contends, that Sesostris was the
son of Amenophis, who was the Pharaoh that was drowned
in pursuit of the Israelites in the Bed sea. He cites Manetho
and Chseremon in Josephus to prove Amenophis to be the
king in whose reign the Israelites went out of Egypt p .
This Amenophis, he says, was the father of Harnesses, who
was also called .JEgyptus, and had Danaus for his brother ;
and JEgyptus and Sesostris were the same person. But, I.
Amenophis was not the king in whose reign the Israelites
left Egypt : Josephus does indeed remark, that Manetho in
one particular place asserts it<J, and that Chaeremon agrees
with him in it r : but then he remarks, that it was a mere
fiction of Manetho's, contrary to what he himself had ex-
pressly owned in other parts of his works 5 , and that Chse-
remon erred in agreeing with him in it 1 ; so that the very
authorities upon which the learned bishop would argue
Amenophis, his supposed father of Sesostris, to have been the
Egyptian king, who reigned at the Jewish exit, have been
long ago refuted by Josephus, the very author from whom
the bishop had them, and in the very place where he found
them. But, 2. if Amenophis was indeed the king who

m Diodor. 1. i. Herodot. 1. ii. P Sanchoniatho, p. 398.

n Diodor. 1. i. c. 57, &c. Herodot. Q Lib. contra Ap. i. c. 26.

1. ii. c. 107. r Id. c. 32.

o See vol. ii. b. viii. Photii extract. s Joseph, ubi sup.

e lib. xi. Diodor. Sic. Photii Biblioth. t Id. ibid.
p. 1151.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 147

reigned at the Jewish exit ; if he was also the father of
Ramesses, or ^Egyptus the brother of Danaus ; yet, as it
appears from what I above offered, that JEgyptus the bro-
ther of Danaus and Sesostris were in no wise the same
person, nothing can be concluded from the learned bishop's
argument to prove Sesostris to have lived in these times.
Here therefore I will leave this subject, though it might be
more largely refuted in every particular belonging to it ;
but so nice a discussion of it must surely be superfluous. One
thing I confess I am surprised at : I much wonder such
learned and judicious writers, as the great authors I have
mentioned, could ever entertain a thought of it. If Se-
sostris had lived in these times, and commanded such victo-
rious armies, as he was said to be master of, would not the
camp of the Israelites have fallen in his way ? or should we
not have had mention made of him amongst the hints we
have in Scripture of the Canaanitish nations ? He must have
carried his forces through these countries ; but they appear
to have enjoyed an uninterrupted peace, until Joshua at-
tacked them. But had the great Sesostris lived in these
times, whence or how should he have raised his armies ?
When Pharaoh pursued the Israelites to the Red sea, he took
his people with him, all his horses and chariots, and all
the chariots of Egypt, and his horsemen, and his army u :
he and all these perished in the sea x . The kingdom had
been just before spoiled of its treasure ?, and every family
weakened by the loss of the firstborn 2 ; and can it appear
probable, that in such a deplorable crisis of affairs, a king of
this country should attempt and pursue a variety of con-
quests of foreign nations? Egypt must at this time have
been reduced so low, as that it might have been an easy
prey to any invasion. The Israelites many times thought
so, and were therefore frequently tempted to an inclination
to return thither, when they met with discouraging diffi-
culties in their expectations of Canaan. When the spies,
that had been employed to search the land, had intimidated

u Exod. xiv. 6, 7, 9. x Ver. 28. y Exod. xii. 36. z Ver. 29, 30.

VOL. II. L

148 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XT.

the congregation, by magnifying the strength and stature of
the inhabitants, the Israelites were for making a captain to
lead them back to Egypt a : they knew the fruitfulness of
this country, were sensible that it must be under a feeble
government; and though they imagined themselves not
able to conquer the Canaanites, who were in their full
strength, yet they were not afraid of an exhausted nation.
And this indeed was a natural way of thinking. But that
Sesostris should be the son of Pharaoh, who was drowned in
the Red sea, and that, in the state which his father's misfor-
tunes must have reduced Egypt to, he should immediately
find strength sufficient to subdue kingdom after kingdom,
and to erect himself a large empire over many great and
flourishing nations ; this must be thought, by any one that
duly considers things, to seem at first sight a most romantic
fiction.

It may perhaps be expected, that I should not only say
who was not, but who really was the Pharaoh that was
drowned in the Red sea. But perhaps this is a point which
I may not be able to determine, so as to have no doubts re-
maining about it. However, as the Egyptian antiquities
have been the study of many learned writers in divers ages,
and great pains have been taken to settle and deduce a rea-
sonable and consistent account of them, it may not be unac-
ceptable to such as have not opportunity of informing them-
selves better, if I here, once for all, set before the reader
some account of the works, or remains, which are most
commonly cited for these antiquities ; after which he may
judge for himself, how far we can fix the particular time of
any reign or transaction which belongs to the history of
this people. And the authorities most generally appealed
to upon this subject are, i. The old Chronographeon. 2. The
tomes of Manetho. 3. The catalogue of Eratosthenes. 4.
Some extracts from Manetho in Josephus. 5. The Chro-
nography of Africanus. 6. The Chronicon of Eusebius. 7.
The Chronographia of Syncellus. And, 8. The Canon Chro-
nicus of our learned countryman, sir John Marsham.

a Numb. xiv. 3, 4.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 149

I. We are told of an old Egyptian Chronographeon, and
Syncellus has preserved us some remains, or rather an im-
perfect account of it : but I may offer the whole of what he
gives us of it in the following translation of his words.
According to him it was thus worded b :

" Time we do not assign to Vulcan, for he is ever. Sol
" the son of Vulcan reigned 30000 years. Then Saturn, and
"the other gods, being 12, reigned 3984 years. Then the
" eight demi-gods, who were kings, reigned 2 1 7 years.
" And after these were set down 15 generations of the
" Cynic Cycle, taking up the space of 443 years. Then
" came the i6th dynasty of Tanite kings, containing 8
" [generations or] reigns of 190 years. Next to these the
" 1 7th dynasty of Memphites, 4 reigns, 103 years. After
" them the i8th dynasty of Memphites, 14 reigns, 348 years.
" Then the I9th dynasty of Diospolitans, 5 reigns, 194 years.
" Then the 2Oth dynasty of Diospolitans, 8 reigns, 228 years.
" Next the 2ist dynasty of Tanites, 6 reigns, 121 years. Then
" the 22d dynasty of Tanites, 3 reigns, 48 years. The 23d
" dynasty of Diospolitans, 2 reigns, 1 9 years. The 24th
" dynasty of Saitans, 3 reigns, 44 years. The 25th dynasty
" of Ethiopians, 3 reigns, 44 years. The 26th dynasty of
" Memphites, 7 reigns, 177 years. The 27th dynasty of
" Persians, 5 reigns, 124 years. .... The 29th dynasty of
" Tanites.... d reigns, 39 years. The 3oth dynasty completes
" the whole, consisting of one Tanite king, his reign 1 1 8
" years."

This is the account we have of the ancient Chronogra-
pheon ; and I would remark concerning it, i . that, except-
ing the three or four first lines, it cannot be thought to be
given us in the very words of the Chronographeon ; rather
it is an abstract of what was supposed to be the contents of
it. The Chronographeon itself, as it particularized the reign
of Sol, and then of Saturn, so unquestionably it exhibited
distinctly the reigns of the other gods, and distributed such

b O0TCD TTWS &rt \Qews fx tl)tf - 'H</K'- we have here an omission of the 28th

crrov xpdvos OVK e<mi> Syncell. p. ST. dynasty,

ed. Par. 1652. d We have here a like omission of

c Through some defect of the copy, the number of the reigns in the 29th.

150 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

a part of the 3984 years said to be the sum of all their reigns,
as belonged respectively to, and was made up from, the
course of each of them. In like manner, I imagine, it re-
counted the 8 demi-gods, and the 15 Cynic heroes, more
distinctly, and in a larger narration, than we here find them ;
for in this account, I take it, we have only the beginning
of the Chronographeon, and then the sum or heads of what
followed, and not the particulars at large that were con-
tained in it. But I would observe, 2. that we have reason
to think, that the foregoing account was not originally in-
tended for an account of the old Chronographeon only, but
rather for an account of the Chronographeon, and of some
other work accommodated and connected to it. From the
beginning of the account, to the end of what is said of the
heroes of the Cynic Cycle, we have the substance of the old
Chronographeon : from what follows thus, then the 1 6th dy-
nasty of Tanite kings, &c. we have the contents, not of the
old Chronographeon, but of some later Chronicle, which
was thought to supply what the old Chronographeon did
not contain, towards the completing the Egyptian history.
In the old Chronographeon, next to the Cynic Cycle, were
lists of the kings of three kingdoms ; first, of the Auritans ;
secondly, of the Mestraeans ; and, thirdly, of the Egyptians 6 :
and so many names of kings were probably contained in
each list, as had reigned to the time perhaps when the Chro-
nographeon was composed. But the author of the account
above produced, not purposing to go on with the more ob-
solete names of the old Chronographeon, but taking the
Auritans to be the same nation as were afterwards called
Tanites, the Mestraeans the same as Memphites, and the
Egyptians the same as Diospolitans ; and knowing that a
later Chronicle at its i6th dynasty began its account of the
Tanite kings; and in its iyth and i8th, its account of the
Memphites ; and in the next dynasty, its account of the
Diospolitans ; he thought this to be a point of time where
he was sure the two registers he copied from coincided ;

e Upwrov IMV TCOV AfyuraJc, Se^rcpov Se rwv MtarpatW, rplrov $e
Syncell. p. 51.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 151

and therefore, having given the contents of the more ancient
one, down to this point, instead of going on in that any fur-
ther, here, says he, we are come to the i6th dynasty, an
epoch well known to those who had perused the accounts
of Manetho ; and from hence he adds dynasty to dynasty,
down to what he took to be the end of the Egyptian
history.

If we do not take the account I am treating of in this
light, it will be hard to reconcile the several parts of it to
one another. We have in it the contents of the Egyptian
history of their gods, demi-gods, Cynic Cycle, and then
comes the i6th dynasty. It must be obvious here to ask,
how comes this to be called the i6th dynasty; for where
are the preceding 15 ? The learned editor of Syncellus was
aware of this difficulty, and therefore suggests in his anno-
tations, that YVal te' KVK\OV KVVIKOV, should be read, dvpaareliai
ie'; that, instead of 15 generations of the Cynic Cycle, we
should read 15 dynasties 1 " : but this is to cut the difficulty, and
not to solve it. This was certainly not the intention of the
author of the account : he imagined the whole history, from
the beginning of the Chronographeon to the end of the
dynasties he added to it, to contain in all but 30 dynasties ;
and accordingly endeavours to sum up the amount of them
all to be 36525 years g : but if we begin the dynasties from
the Cynic Cycle, the sum of them will fall short myriads of
years of that number, and the Chronographeon will contain
the history of the gods and demi-gods, besides the dynasties,
which the composer of this account had no notion of its
doing.

I might add further, that if we take the account above
mentioned to give us the contents of the old Chronogra-
pheon only, we shall destroy the supposed antiquity of the
Chronographeon ; for as the 27th dynasty mentions the Persian
kings h , of whom Cambyses was the first"; so it is evident,

f Vid. Annotat. Goar. ad Syncell. h Kol yuer& rovrovs K

p. 5t. Ufptruv e. ITWV p/c8'. Syncell. p. 52.

& Vid. Euseb. Chronic, p. 7. ed. i Vid. Syncell. p. 76. Prideaux,

Amst. 1658. Syncell. p. 52. ed. Par. Connect, part i. b. iii. ann. 519.
1652.

152 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

that the other 3 dynasties carry on the Egyptian history to
about the time of Nectanebus k , and there Manetho's tomes
ended 1 . Nectanebus was expelled his kingdom by Ochus
king of Persia, about 350 years before Christ" 1 , A.M. 3654.
Manetho dedicated his tomes to Ptolemy Philadelphus be-
fore A.M. 3757", within about 100 years after Nectanebus;
so that if the old Chronographeon reached down to Necta-
nebus, Manetho's work and that must have been of about
the same antiquity. I ought here to take notice that some
very learned writers have imagined this old Chronographeon
to be nothing else but an abridgment of Manetho : this was
Scaliger's opinion ; and accordingly, in his Chronicon of
Eusebius, he puts upon it the following title : @e<S^ fiaa-iktla
Kara TO 7ra\aLov xP OViKOV * K r & v MaveOti. Or, " The reign of
" the gods according to the old chronicle out of the books
" of Manetho ." And this, I believe, was dean Prideaux's
sentiment: he tells us, we have an epitome of Manetho's
work preserved in SyncellusP, taking, I suppose, this Chro-
nographeon to be that epitome. But they were probably led
to think it so, from Manetho's work and the Chronogra-
pheon's ending at the same period, and would perhaps have
thought differently of it, had they duly observed how the
account we have of the Chronographeon differs, the former
part of it from the latter part, in a very remarkable parti-
cular, which argues it to have been an abstract of not one,
but of two different works : the former part exhibiting the
contents of a work which had not been divided into such
dynasties as the latter part is made up of; the latter part
containing the substance of one half of a work, which
had comprehended in 30 dynasties the whole Egyptian
history.

That the old Chronographeon was a different and distinct
work from Manetho's, is evident from Syncellus ; for he
collected from it, that Manetho had committed errors 9 ;

k Syncell. p. 76, 77. Prideaux, b. o Euseb. Chronic, p. 6.
iii. aim. 519. b. vii. ann. 350. P Connect, part i. b. vii. ad annum

1 Syncell. p. 256. 350.

m Prideaux, b. vii. ib. <1 'E| o5 Kttl rbv

n Id. part ii. b. ii. ann. 247. vopify. Syncell. p. 51.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

153

and suggests, that the period of time, which the old Chro-
nographeon digested into dynasties, was not the same with
that which Manetho sorted into divisions of a like denomi-
nation 1 ". From the old Chronographeon, Manetho took an
hint, which led him to compose the Egyptian history in
such sections 5 ; but the dynasties of the old Chronographeon
were astronomical, not historical 1 . The page of Syncellus,
from which we might hope to form a judgment of this old
Chronographeon, is printed very incorrectly, or perhaps
never had the last hand of its author ; for Syncellus died
before he had completed and corrected his work u ; and,
I should think, has left us in this page rather some hints,
which he might purpose afterwards to perfect, than a clear
and complete account of the old Chronographeon. As far
as we can guess from his short and imperfect suggestions,
the old Chronographeon divided a very large period of time,
a space of 36525 years, first into 30 dynasties, then, ev yt-
vais TTCL\IV pty, it subdivided it again into 113 generations 251 .
The Egyptians reputed a period of 36525 years to be the
space of time, in which the luminaries of heaven performed
what they called an entire revolution of the worldY; and
perhaps, at the time of the composure of the Chronographeon,
they might think their revolution of the Zodiac to be per-
formed in 1217 years and 6 months, and so to be repeated
30 times in the course of years above mentioned 2 ; and
this might lead them to divide that great period by 30
into dynasties. And if I could trace the fictions of their
romantic astronomy, and determine precisely the particular
lights of heaven, which in the first ages were called their
gods, and calculate exactly how they measured the courses
of each of them, I might probably deduce 113 other periods
contained in the 36525 years, which they might call gene-

A.' Swaarreiuv xp^ ov u Prsefat. in Syncell.

, KO! ou rbv avrbv rbv MaveOuJ. * Syncell. p. 51.

Syncell. p. 51. 7 Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 9. Lend.

s 'E/c T6vT(av 5rj\a8^ \aftcloi' Tas cupop- 1672. See vol. i. b. i.

/ucis. Id. p. 52. z Afterwards they computed a re-

t Alyinrnoi fj*v ras irepdSovs Kal volution of the Zodiac more accurately

(j-vpidSas frwv, Karddea-iv riva T&V trap to be 1460 years, still falling a little

au-roTy a<rrpo\oyovfj.tv6av QeQevro. Id. short of a true calculation. Censorin.

P- 17. de Die Natali, c. 18.

154 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI

rations, and shew how in these their said gods completed
again other courses, which had relations to one another.
Of this sort were the 30 dynasties and 1 13 generations of
the old Chronographeon, and belonged to the courses of the
sun, moon, and stars, which were the gods of Egypt in these
times a . After these the Chronographeon gave account of
the demi-gods and their times, but not in dynasties ; and
who these were, I have already considered 13 . Next it re-
lated the heroes of the Cynic Cycle ; and lastly, added
the names of such Auritan, Mestrsean, and Egyptian kings d ,
as had reigned down to the times where the Chronographeon
ended. Let us now consider in the next place the tomes of
Manetho.

II. Manetho was a learned and noble Egyptian at the
head of their sacra*. About the time or soon after the
Septuagint translation was made of the Hebrew Scriptures,
he was ordered by Ptolemy Philadelphus to compile the
history of his own country ; and having consulted the sacred
books of the Egyptians, and extracted, as he pretended, what
had been transcribed into them from their most ancient
monuments, and completed his undertaking in the Greek
tongue, he dedicated it to Ptolemy, at whose command he
had composed it f . His work contained an account of the
gods, demi-gods, heroes, and mortals, that had reigned in
Egypt g 1 ; and herein the subject-matter of it bare a re-
semblance of the old Chronographeon ; for that, as I have
said, began with the reigns of Sol and the other gods, then
gave account of the demi-gods, then of the Cynic heroes,
and lastly of the Auritan, Mestrsean, and Egyptian kings.
Manetho divided his history into 30 dynasties and 1 13 gene-
rations 11 ; but he differed from the Chronographeon, in that
the times he treated under these titles were not the same
periods with those which the Chronographeon exhibited under

a See vol. i. b. i. b. v. Syncell. p. 40.

b Book i. S 'Ev rpiaKovra SvvaffTfiais iaropei

c Vid. book i. TU>V A.eyojueVou' trap avrots Ofuv, Kal

d Syncell. p. 51. rifju8fa>i>, Kal i/e/flW, Kal OVIJTUV trtpuv
e Syncell. p. 40. Voss. de Hist. Graec. o(nAeW. Syncell. p. 40.

1. i. c. 14. h piy' yweuv ev Svvaffr fiats \' avaye-
f Joseph, contra Ap. 1. i. c. 14. ypa/j-pfvuv. Syncell. p. 52.

AND PKOFANE HISTORY. 155

the like denominations'. The dynasties and generations of
the Chronographeon were astronomical, prior to the reigns
or lives of the demi-gods ; but Manetho's began from the
reigns of the gods, were carried on through the reigns of
the demi-gods, heroes, and mortals, and terminated with
Nectanebus. Manetho was unquestionably a great master
of the Egyptian learning, and might think it a point of
their doctrines, that all things had their period in 36525
years k . He had lived to see the ancient glory of his country
passed over : Egypt was in the possession of a foreign race
of kings in his times. Nectanebus was the last Egyptian
that sat on the throne of this nation 1 : upon his flight from
Ochus king of Persia, Egypt came over into the hands of
the Persians, and afterwards was reduced by Alexander the
Great m ; and at his death was a part of the provinces of
Ptolemy, one of his captains, who in few years became king
of it, and his son Ptolemy Philadelphus reigned when
Manetho wrote his history. Thus Manetho had seen of the
Egyptian race of kings, that their times had been fulfilled,
and their kingdom departed from them ; and upon the
dogmata of the Egyptian learning, he conceived such a re-
volution might indeed happen at the end of 36525 years,
and therefore deduced his dynasties according to it, and
hereby made his work not dishonourable to his country, or
to the stock of which himself was descended " ; for it shewed
the Egyptian reigns to have been carried down to a full and
complete period, and it might be likely to give Ptolemy no
disadvantageous sentiments of the Egyptian sacra and learn-
ing, if it could suggest to him, that his kingdom was founded
near the beginning of a new order of ages , and might,
under the protection of the same gods, be extended to as
late a date.

1 Ou rbv avrbv [xp6vov~\ rbf MavcOw. race. Syncell. p. 40. A family which

Syncell. p. 51. in Nectanebus ascended the throne.

k Vid. Jamblich. de Myster. ./Egypt. Prideaux ubi sup.
c. de Deo atque Diis. o Virgil compliments the Augustan

1 Prideaux, Connect, part i. b. vii. age, in which the affairs of Rome were

ann. 350. come to a new settlement, in this

m Id. ibid. manner : Magnus ab integro seclorum

n Manetho was of the 8ebennite nascitur ardo. Eclog. iv. 1. 5.

156 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

Syncellus has in several places, from Africanus and other
writers, given us the numbers of years supposed to belong
to the parts of Manetho's history : but the reader would
have little satisfaction, if I were to collect and compare
them ; for they do not appear to be the true numbers, nor
are they always consistent with one another?. Syncellus un-
questionably never saw the work of Manetho q; no remains
of it were extant in his times, other than what later writers
had cited from him : and the several writers, that had cited
Manetho, had so calculated, reduced r , and disposed what
they cited, to make it suit such schemes as themselves had
formed of the Egyptian antiquities, that Syncellus could at
best only guess what Manetho's scheme was, or what pre-
cise number of years he really assigned to the several parti-
culars of it. Manetho composed his work in three tomes,
volumes, or rather books 8 : it contained, as above, 30 dy-
nasties, deduced through 113 reigns, successions, or genera-
tions^ In the former dynasties the history of the gods,
demi-gods, and heroes was continued ; in the latter, the
history of the mortal kings u ; and, according to the supple-
ment to the old Chronographeon above mentioned, the ac-
count of the mortal kings took up the last 15 dynasties x ;
and in them were set down the reigns or successions of be-
tween 70 and 80 kings y, in the space of 17 or 1800 years 2 .
If the number of kings were 77 a , add to these 15 Cynic

P Syncell. p. 1 8, 19, 52. from the true history of Egypt, from

Q Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 3. Nectanebus's advancement to the

T Vid. Syncell. p. 19. Numeri isti throne, to the flight of Nectanebus.

non tarn Manethonis sunt, quam Eu- See Prideaux, Connect, part i. b. vii.

sebii vel Panodori. Marsham ubi sup. an. 350.

s Syncell. p. 52. z If the reader counts up the num-

t Ibid. bers of years assigned to the reigns of

Ibid. the kings in the several dynasties an-

x Ibid. nexed to the Chronographeon, suppos-

y The number of kings will be ing 6 years to be the reign of the king

found to be 77, if we fill up the 28th omitted in the 28th dynasty, (see this

dynasty with the reign of i king, and dynast, in African, et Euseb. Syncell.

the 29th with 5, and suppose the 3oth p. 76, 77.) and supposing the years

to contain the reign not of i, but of of the 3oth dynasty to be 25, not 18,

3 kings. And that these supplements (consult Prideaux's Connection for the

and corrections are just, the reader reigns of the kings which belonged to

may be satisfied from the accounts that dynasty,) he will find the sum of

given of these 'dynasties by Africanus years to be 1710.

and Eusebius, Syncell. p. 76, 77, and a Vid. quae sup.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 157

heroes b , 8 demi gods c , 12 gods d , and Sol the son of Vulcan,
and we have perhaps Manetho's 113 generations. In like
manner I might attempt to fix the numbers of years which
he assigned to the several generations. If the reigns of his
kings amounted to between 17 and 1800 years, then the
reigns of his gods, demi-gods, and heroes, filled up the
space of almost 35000; for all together made 36525 years.
The numbers of years of the reigns of the kings, as calcu
lated in the supplement to the old Chronographeon, are
1710*: the dynasties ended with Nectanebus, A. M 3654^;
count back from hence 1710 years, and we begin the reign
of the first king, A. M. 1944. Menes, or the Mizraim of
MosesS, went into Egypt about A. M. 1772, removed from
the land of Zoan there into a further part of the country
about A.M. 1881, and died about A.M. 1943*" ; so that
Manetho's accounts began the kings about Menes's times'.
Of this sort, I believe, was the work of Manetho : and it is
obvious to observe of it, that it did not appear to carry the
accounts of the Egyptian kings so far backward, as the
Greeks must imagine they ought to be carried, from what
had been before published of them in the Greek tongue.
Herodotus wrote about a century and half earlier than
Manetho k : and, according to what he collected, the Egyp-
tians had had from Menes to Cambyses above 350 kings 1 .
When Herodotus was in Egypt, he was carried into a temple,
where he counted the number of the statues of the priests,
that were set up there, and he told 345; and the Egyp-
tians informed him, that they had so many priests, and as
many kings, from Menes their first king to Sethos 11 . We
cannot imagine that Herodotus should herein publish an

b Chronograph. Syncell. p. 51. determine absolutely that this was the

c Ibid real number fixed by Manetho : from

d Ibid. this number we may form a general

e Vid. quae sup. notion of his computations, and that

f Syncell. p. 256. ed. Par. 1652. is all we can pretend to endeavour at.
S See vol. i. b. iv. k Compute the time of Herodotus

h Ibid. from Prideaux, Connect, part i. b. vi. ad

i I cannot think the numbers are an. 444.

printed so accurately, or that we may 1 Herodot. Hist. lib. ii.

be able perhaps to correct them with m Id. ibid. c. 142.

so much certainty and exactness, as to n Ibid.

158 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

absolute falsehood ; and if Herodotus did indeed see such a
collection of statues, how is it possible that there should
have been no more kings of Egypt, than what Manetho
seems to have suggested? But this matter may be easily
cleared. The Egyptians had collected into this temple the
statues of priests from a multitude of cities, and might, in
shewing them to strangers, ostentatiously set off the number
of their priests and kings, not telling how they had collected
them, and they might hereby easily send into the world
enlarged accounts of the Egyptian antiquities. But Ma-
netho knew the affairs of his country too well to be led
into this error : he supposed one continued empire to have
subsisted and been maintained in Egypt from Menes to Nec-
tanebus; that the seat of it had in different ages been at
different cities ; sometimes at This, sometimes at Memphis,
sometimes at Diospolis, and sometimes at Tanis ; and accord-
ingly he deduces and connects a series of those kings, whom
he imagined to have had in their times the supreme com-
mand, omitting all others their contemporaries, whom he
supposed to have governed but as deputies to these in their
respective provinces or cities. However, Manetho's account
does not seem to have given an entire satisfaction; for in
a little time after he had composed it, in the reign of
Ptolemy Euergetes the immediate successor of Philadelphus,
who had employed Manetho, Eratosthenes was ordered to
make a further collection of the Egyptian kings.

III. Eratosthenes was a Cyrenian, had studied at Athens,
was of great eminence for his parts and learning, had an
invitation into Egypt from Ptolemy Euergetes, who made
him one of the keepers of the royal library at Alexandria ,
and commanded him to give him a catalogue of the Egyp-
tian kings. Eratosthenes hereupon made a list of the kings
who had reigned at Thebes or Diospolis, and to every
king's name added the number of years in his reign. His
catalogue is preserved in SyncellusP, and the names of the
kings, and number of years of the respective reigns set

o Voss. de Histor. Graec. 1. i. c. 17. Prideaux,, Connect, p. ii. b. ii. ann. 239.
p Syncell. p. 91 147.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 159

down in it, are as follows : i. Menes reigned years 62.
n. Athothes 59. in. Another Athothes 32. iv. Diabies
19. v. Pemphos 18. vi. Taegar Amachus Momcheiri 79.
vn. Staechus 6. vm. Gosormies 30. ix. Mares 26. x.
Anoyphes 20. xi. Sirius 18. xn. Chnoubus Gneurus 22.
xin. Ramosis 13. xiv. Biyris 10. xv. Saophis Comastes
29. xvi. Sen-Saophis 27. xvn. Moscheris Heliodotus 31.
xvm. Musthis 33. xix. Pammus Archondes 35. xx. Apap-
pus maximus joo. xxi. Achescus Ocaras I. xxn. Nitocris
6. xxiii. Myrtseus Ammonodotus 22. xxiv. Thuosi Mares
12. xxv. Thinillus 8. xxvi. Semphruceates 18. xxvn.
Chouther Taurus 7. xxvui. Meures Philoscorus 12. xxix.
Chomseptha Mundus Philephsestus 1 1 . xxx. Anchunius
Ochy-Tyrannus 60. xxxi. Penteathyris 16. xxxn. Stame-
nemes 23. xxxm. Sistosichermes 55. xxxiv. Moeris 43.
xxxv. Siphoas or Mercury 5. xxxvi. The name of the king
is wanting, the years of his reign are 14. xxxvn. Pheuron or
Nilus 5 years, xxxvin. Amuthantseus 63. This is the re-
main we have of Eratosthenes, taken by Syncellus from the
annals of Apollodorusq. It begins from Menes, who was the
Mizraim of Moses r , 62 years before the death of Menes, 124
years, says Syncellus, after the confusion of tongues 8 , that
is, when Menes removed from the land of Tanis into The-
bais, A. M. iSSi 1 . The sum of all the reigns contained in
the catalogue amount, according to Syncellus, to 1076
years", and consequently the catalogue may be computed
to end A. M. 2957. But before I leave this work of Era-
tosthenes, I would offer a few remarks upon it. i. The
nature and manner of it points out what were the re-
puted defects of Manetho's performance at the time of
composing it : had Manetho's been esteemed a complete
work, Eratosthenes would certainly not have been em-

q Syncell. p. 91. lus's Chronographia, at the name of

r Gen. x. 13. vol. i. b. iv. Penteathyris the 3ist king, it is re-

8 Syncell. p. 147. marked, that the years of his reign

* Vol. i. b. iv. should be read /ij8'. not '. 42, not 16 ;

u If the reader sums up the reigns make this correction, and the sum of

above recounted, he will find them years of the catalogue will be 1076, as

amount to but 1050. But I must ob- Syncellus writes it.

serve, that, in the margin of Syncel-

160 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

ployed so soon after him : but the number of Egyptian
kings suggested by Herodotus, upon the appearance of a
strict inquiry, and a very good information, could not but
put the learned Greeks at Alexandria, as well as others,
upon examining whether Manetho was not deficient in his
number of Egyptian kings. With this view Eratosthenes
collected the kings of one particular kingdom. There were
in Manetho's dynasties but about 15 kings of the Theban
kingdom x : but, besides these, Eratosthenes collected 38,
who had been omitted by Manetho. 2. The learned have
very reasonably computed Eratosthenes's catalogue to be
carried down to the times of the first Diospolitan king men-
tioned in the dynasties of Manetho y, i. e. the king of Dios-
polis, who was the first of Manetho's 1 2th dynasty, was the
immediate successor of AmuthantaBus, the last of the cata-
logue of Eratosthenes. 3. It is something difficult to form a
computation of the numbers of years belonging to the
reigns in Eratosthenes, and in Manetho, suitable to the con-
necting Eratosthenes^s catalogue to Manetho's dynasties in
this manner : but I should think, we are so far from being
sure that we have every number in either Eratosthenes or
Manetho exactly as they left them, or that they themselves
did not mistake sometimes in computing or transcribing the
old Egyptian numeral characters, that great stress cannot be
laid upon any seeming repugnancies of this nature. As
Eratosthenes's catalogue now stands, from the beginning of
the catalogue to the reign of Nilus the 37th king, are 982
years ; so that Nilus began his reign according to this account
about A. M. 2863. But Dicasarchus computed the reign of
Nilus to the 436th year before the first Olympiad 2 ; if we
fix the first Olympiad to A. M. 3228*, Nilus began his
reign A. M. 2792, 71 years earlier than the catalogue
suggests to us. But for errors of this sort, allowances must
be given and taken in many parts of the ancient Egyptian
history.

x Vid. Chronograph. i9th, zoth, 23d z Apollon. Argonaut, lib. iv. v. 272.

dyn. Syncell. p. 51, 52. in Schol. vetust. Hen. Steph. ed. 1584.

y Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 3. Pri- a Vid. Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 423.

deaux, Connect, part ii. b. ii. ad ann. Usher's Annals ad ann. Per. Jul. 3938.
239-

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 161

IV. We have in Josephus some citations from Manetho,
which ought in the next place to be examined. Josephus
tells us from Manetho, that the incursion of the Pastors, who
made themselves masters of Egypt b , happened when Ti-
mseus was king c ; that the first Pastor king was Salatis, that
he reigned 19 years: he was succeeded by Bseon, who
reigned 44 years : after Baeon reigned Apachnas, 36 years
and 7 months ; then Apophis 61 years ; then Janias 50 years

1 month; after whom Assis 49 years 2 months d ; and after
these, other kings. Josephus informs us that the Pastors
held Egypt in subjection 511 years 6 ; that at the end of that
term Alisfragmuthosis, a Theban king, gave them a great
overthrow, and that his son Thummosis reduced them to
leave Egypt f . After this, Josephus from Manetho gives us
^a list of Theban kings, i. Tethmosis reigned 25 years
4 months, n. Chebron 13 years, in. Amenophis 20 years
7 months. iv. Amesses 21 years 9 months. v. Mephres
12 years 9 months. vi. Mephrammuthosis 25 years 10
months. vn. Thmosis 9 years 8 months. vm. Amenophis
30 years 10 months, ix. Orus 36 years 5 months, x. Acen-
cheres 12 years I month, xi. Rathotis 9 years. xn. Acen-
cheres 12 years 5 months, xm. Another Acencheres 12
years 3 months, xiv. Harmais 4 years i month, xv. Ha-
rnesses i year 4 months, xvi. Harnesses Miamon 66 years

2 months xvn. Amenophis 19 years 6 months. xvm.
Sethosis 59 years h . xix. E-ampses or Ramesses 66 years 1 .
Concerning what is thus offered by Josephus, I would
observe,

i . That we have no reason to imagine that the first Pastor
kings were a real part of Manetho's Egyptian dynasties.
Manetho's purpose was to deduce the succession of the Egyp-
tian kings ; but the Pastor kings were not Egyptian ; they
were foreign invaders, who overran Egypt, and reduced a
great part of the country into subjection. When therefore
Manetho came down to the times where they made their

b See vol. ii. b. vii. f Ibid.

c Joseph, contra Apion. 1. i. c. 14. Id. c. 15.

d Ibid. h Id. c. 26.

e Ibid. i Ibid.

162 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

invasion, though he probably took notice of their incursion,
their names, what part of the country they gained possession
of; yet he probably continued down the history of the kings
of Egypt in the Thebans, who were not reduced by the
Pastors ; accordingly, in the Epitome of Manetho we find no
dynasty of Pastors k , nor would Africanus 1 or Eusebius m , I
should think, have supposed any, had they duly attended to
what must have been the design of Manetho's performance :
they might perhaps have remarked the Pastor kings over-
against, and contemporary with, those kings of Thebais, in
whose reigns they got possession of a great part of Egypt.
2. The Pastors came into Egypt about A. M. 2420": until
this time Egypt appears in Scripture to have enjoyed a long
and uninterrupted peace from its most early ages : but now
a new or foreign? king arose, unacquainted with what had
been transacted in it**; and farther, the sacred pages suggest
a people to have been about this time expelled their country,
who probably might be these Pastors, who invaded Egypt.
In like manner, if from A. M. 2420, we count down 511
years, the term during which the Pastors kept their con-
quests, we shall fix their leaving Egypt to about A. M. 293 1 :
they had then leave to march into whatever country they
liked to go, and that would receive them 8 : they marched
through the desert *, and probably found a reception in some
nation of Arabia ; they went from Egypt not fewer in num-
ber than 240000", and consequently the nation that received
so considerable an addition to its people, must in a little time
have grown very populous. Agreeably hereto, about A. M.
3063 x , within little more than a century, Zerah the Ethi-
opian or Cushitey, a king in Arabia Petrsea, invaded his

k Vid. Chronograph. have no mention of the state of it in

1 Africanus supposes 3 Pastor dy- the Scriptures. See bishop Cumber-
nasties,, the 1 5th, i6th, and i7th. Syn- land's Sanchoniatho, and his Origines
cell. p. 61. Gentium.

m Eusebius suggests but one Pastor- P Exod. i. 8. See vol. ii. b. vii.

dynasty, namely his I'jth. Euseb. Q Ibid.

Chron. p. 16. ed. Seal. Amst. 1658. r Ibid.

Syncell. p. 61. s Joseph, contra Apion. 1. i. c. 14.

n See vol. ii. b. vii. t Ibid.

The learned writers, who would u Ibid,

introduce the Pastors in another age, x Usher's Annals,

are forced to place them about the first y See vol. i. b. iii.
planting of Egypt, in times when we

AND PROFANE HISTOKY. 163

neighbours with an army of a thousand thousand 2 ; so that
the sacred pages offer us intimations of the state both of
Egypt, and of the neighbouring countries, well answering
to the thus fixing the times of the Pastors. 3. Josephus
seems to me not to be consistent with himself, in the account
he gives from Manetho of the Theban kings a : in one place
he says Tummosis the son of Alisfragmuthosis expelled the
Pastors b ; this Tummosis was surely the king whom he after-
wards calls Thmosis, and whom he sets down next to Me-
phramuthosis c : and yet in recounting these kings, he sets
Tethmosis, who, he says, expelled the Pastors, 5 reigns be-
fore Mephramuthosis d . But probably Manetho had rendered
this part of his work dark and confused : Manetho took the
Israelites and the Pastors to be one and the same people e ,
and by treating the Jewish exit, and the expulsion of the
Pastors, as one event, he might mention the names of dif-
ferent kings, so as to lead Josephus into this contrariety. If
we may form our notion of Manetho's work from the Epi-
tome of it f , Josephus mistook the number of Manetho's
Theban kings : the Epitome suggests him to have mentioned
only 15; five in his I9th dynasty, 8 in his 2Oth, and 2 in his
23d. And if I knew how to choose the 15 rightly out of
Josephus's list, and to make the first five begin where
Eratosthenes's catalogue ends, and continue to the expulsion
of the Pastors ; and then to choose eight more, whose reigns
might carry on the history to Sesostris or Sethosis, who was
Sesac, and came against Jerusalem A. M. 30338; I should
take the last two of Manetho's Theban kings to be Sesostris
and his son Harnesses : and I should imagine I had hereby
set right Josephus's catalogue, and made Manetho's account
agreeable, in this part of it, to true history.

V. Next to Josephus, we are to consider the work of
Africanus. Sextus Julius Africanus was a Christian, lived in
the third century, and wrote about an hundred and fifty
years after Josephus : he composed a Chronography, consist-

z 2 Chron. xiv. d Joseph, cont. Apion. 1. i. c. 15.

a Joseph, cont. Apion. 1. i. c. 15. e Ibid. c. 14, 16, 26.

b Ibid. c. 14. f Chronograph, in Syncell. p. 51, 52,

c Ibid. c. 15. Africanus and Euse- e See pref. to vol. ii.
bius call him Tuthmosis.

VOL. II. M

164) CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK XI.

ing of two parts ; in the former part he collected, from other
more ancient writers, the materials he intended to make use
of; in the latter part he formed from them a chronicle or
historical deduction, beginning from the creation of the
world, and carried down to the consulate of Gratus and Se-
leucus, to the year of our Lord 221, says sir John Marsham h .
Amongst other collections in the former part of his work,
were the dynasties of Manetho ; but not such as Manetho
left them ; for they were new modelled according to some
scheme of them formed later than the times of Manetho.
For, i. Manetho's dynasties began with the reigns of the
gods, demi-gods, and heroes, and then exhibited the reigns
of the mortal kings 1 : but the dynasties given us by Africa-
nus begin from the mortal kings k , and omit all that related
to the superior beings, who were said to have reigned before
them 1 . 2. Manetho's dynasties of the mortal kings were
but 15 ; they began at the i6th dynasty, and ended with
the 3Oth m : but Africanus offers us 3 1 dynasties of Egyptian
kings. Upon this account we must conclude, 3. that several
of Africanus's dynasties were not in Manetho : thus the
3 ist dynasty was not Manetho's; for he carried down his
history no farther than to the end of Nectanebus's reign ;
but this 3 ist dynasty contains the names of Persian kings,
who reigned after Nectanebus was expelled his kingdom 11 .
In like manner Manetho's tomes seem to me not to have
had Africanus's 2d dynasty of Thinite kings , nor the 5th of
Elephantine, nor the 6th of Memphites, nor the i5th of
Pastors, nor the 22d of Bubastites, as Africanus gives us
them. Further, Africanus^s i8th dynasty of Theban kings
seems to be taken rather from Josephus than from Manetho ;
for Manetho had in all but 15 Theban kings, and those set

h Can. Chron. p. 5. o It ought to be here observed, that

i Syncell. p. 40. Africanus perhaps did not in his first

k Id. p. 54. and second dynasty copy after Mane-

1 Africanus begins his dynasties thus, tho : Manetho gave a list of ftaviXewv

'M.rk.vicvasTovsf)iMOfovsTrp<bT't]l3a(ri\la. TavirSov. Vid. Chronograph. But Afri-

Karapid/j.f'trai &a<n\4<av OKT& Syncell. canus's ist and 2d dynasties are not of

ibid. Tanite, but eivirwv, of the kings of

m Vid. Chronograph. in Syncell. p. 5 T, This, or of Thinite kings ; so that Afri-

52. KOI tirl -rrdo-cus \' Swaffrela. canus had found here a different cata-

n The kings of the 3 ist dynasty are logue of kings from Manetho's, and

Ochus, Arses, Darius. Syncell. p. 77. did not distinguish it.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

165

down in 3 dynasties P. As to Africanus's yth, 8th, 9th, loth,
i3th, i4th, i6th, 1 7th, and 2oth dynasties, they are mere
numbers of years without any names of kings affixed to
themq, and unquestionably no such dynasties were to be
found in Manetho.

It may be here asked, how can it be imagined that Africanus
should take away from, and add to, Manetho's dynasties in
this extravagant manner, or how or whence could he find
matter or pretence to do it? I answer, i. For his omission of
what Manetho had recorded prior to the reigns of the mortal
kings, it is easy to find a good reason : he thought all that
Manetho offered of the reigns of gods, demi-gods, and he-
roes, to be fable, fiction, or false theology 1 ", and therefore
superfluous, not worth his transcribing. 2. There might be
in the tomes of Manetho the names of many kings, besides
those which Manetho supposed his dynasties to consist of:
Manetho accounted all Egypt, from its rise to Nectanebus,
to have been but one empire ; and in considering it as such,
he deduced one continued history of the kings, who had
had the supreme rule of it : but as he supposed the seat of
this empire to have been at different times at different cities ;
and agreeably hereto, as his dynasties were sometimes of
kings of Tanis, sometimes of kings of Memphis, and some-
times of Diospolis, according as he thought the kings who
had the supreme command, reigned at this or that city : and
as it might happen, whilst the kings of a Memphite or The-
ban dynasty were at the head of affairs, there might be in
Manetho's account deputy rulers at Tanis, Bubastus, Ele-
phantis, or other cities ; so from hence Africanus might
have an opportunity of making a Tanite dynasty, an Ele-
phantine, a Memphite, and a Bubastite, more than Manetho
ever supposed. The names of the kings suggested by Africa-
nus in these dynasties were perhaps to be found in Ma-

P Vid. 1 9th, 2Oth, 23d dynast, in epevs ypd<pci ^fvSriyopwv ircpl Qtwv ovSc-

Chronograph. in Syncell. ubi sup. irore yeyovdrw, ista omnia tanquam

Q Meros numeros inaniter turgentes. scrip tore Christiano indigna Africanus

Marsham, Can. Chron. p. 5. aspernatur, et in illud tempus rejicit,

r Quse Manetho (uapiov lepwv apxi- quod prsecessit diluvium. Marsham, p. 5.

M 2

166 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

netho's history : but Manetho might record them as tri-
butary or deputy rulers to some of the kings of the dynasties
he treated of: Africanus supposed them independent, and
made dynasties appropriated to them. 3. Africanus's j^th
dynasty contains the names of the Pastor kings, and the
names of these were to be found in Manetho 8 : but Manetho
did not relate these Pastors to be a part of the Egyptian
succession of kings, but rather noted them to have invaded
and dispossessed some of the Egyptian kings of a great part
of Egypt, and accordingly only mentions them as being in
Egypt in the times of those kings. 4. Manetho had men-
tioned 15 kings of Thebais, ^ in his I9th dynasty, 8 in his
2Oth, and 2 in his 23 d r : Africanus has named as many in
his nth, 1 2th, and 19th dynasties; he further found several
Theban kings' names in Josephus, said to be taken from
Manetho u ; he collected these also, and made of them his
1 8th dynasty x . But he should have observed, that Josephus
has through some mistake multiplied the names of these
kings beyond what Manetho intended; and further, there
is such a repetition and similitude of names in this dynasty,
and in Africanus's nth, i2th, and I9th, that it seems most
probable that they offer us only the same kings, with some
small diversity in naming them, and that 15 kings rightly
chosen out of the names mentioned in these four dynasties,
would give us the true reigns that Manetho had recorded.
5. The dynasties, suggesting reigns without names of kings,
were perhaps added by Africanus from the intimations of
Herodotus y; or, from the time that Manetho's account came
to be generally esteemed deficient. Soon after Eratosthenes
had published his catalogue, it might grow customary for
the learned to annotate upon their copies of the tomes of
Manetho, what kings' names, and what reigns they con-
ceived him to have omitted in every part of his history ; and
from some transcripts of such enlarged copies of the tomes
of Manetho, Africanus, who did not write until near 500

s Vid. Joseph, contra Ap. 1. i. c. 14. x Syncell. p. 69.

t Vid. Chronograph, in Syncell. p. y Herodotus computes about 368

51, &c. kings down to Cambyses. Vid. Histor.

u Joseph, ubi sup. 1. ii. 1. iii.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 167

years after him, might apprehend, that such dynasties as he
has offered might be collected from the books of Manetho.

If the reader will take the pains to inspect Africanus's
account of the dynasties, and to compute the number of
reigns, and years of the reigns contained in them, he will
find the kings, named and not named, to be together in
number 473, down to the end of Nectanebus's reign, and
that the sum of all their reigns amounts to 4823 years
4 months and 10 days. But Africanus could not purpose to
bring such a length of Egyptian history within the compass
that his work could allow for it; for whoever will consider
the nature of his epochs and chronology, what year of the
world he supposed Noah's flood to have happened in, and to
what year he fixed the end of Nectanebus's reign, will see
that he could not have above the space of 2880 years for the
Egyptian history : and unquestionably in the second part of
his work, when he came to use the collections he had made,
he brought his dynasties down to about this measure ; which
he might readily do, if, in composing his chronicle, he re-
jected the reigns as fictitious, which have no names of kings
annexed to them, and took into his history only the kings
whose names he has given us ; for the kings so named by
him are in number but 128, and the times of their reigns
amount to 2983 years 55 : and Africanus might apprehend
from Diodorus Siculus, who flourished in the times of Julius
Csesar a , long after Herodotus and Manetho, and who had
been in Egypt for information as well as Herodotus b , that
Herodotus's enlarged catalogue of kings of Egypt ought
probably to be reduced to about this number : in this man-
ner I would consider the work of Africanus, and think of
him ; not that he made imaginary dynasties, and altered and
interpolated Manetho just as his fancy led him d , for this

z If we may suppose in this number b Diodor. 1. i. c. 4, 44.

a mistake of 100 years, which is no c Diodorus suggests about 130 kings

great matter, considering how often of Egypt. Histor. 1. i.

the transcribers might miscalculate, or d Sir John Marsham says of him,

write erroneously the old numeral cha- Maximus Manethonis interpolator Afri-

racters, we shall have a number suited canus vetustiores suas dynastias (siquid

to Africanus's chronology. video) ex mero suo ipsius arbitrio dispo-

a Prideaux, Connect, part ii. b. vii. suit: si penitius inspiciamus, alias ilia-
ad aim. 60. Voss. de Hist. Greec. 1. ii. rum frustula tantum ease dynastiarum,
c. 2. all as reperiemus meros essenumeros in-

168 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

would be to make him a most romantic writer; but rather,
I. That he took into his dynasties what he thought Manetho
to have duly adjusted to true history, and of this sort we
may suppose his ist, 3d, 4th, nth, I2th, iQth, 2ist, 23d,
4th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 3oth, answering to Ma-
netho's 15 dynasties from the i6th to the 3oth e . 2. He
added to these in other dynasties some names of kings
mentioned in Manetho to have reigned in Egypt ; but he
differed from Manetho, I take it, in a material point about
these kings. He deduced their reigns in dynasties made for
them, as if they had continued and brought down the Egyp-
tian succession. Manetho did not suppose any of these kings
to have reigned in times distinct from the Egyptian, but
rather that they were deputies to, or usurpers, who held and
kept some parts of Egypt from the rightful sovereigns their
contemporaries, kings of the true Egyptian line : of these
Africanus perhaps made his 2d, 5th, 6th, I5th, and 22d dy-
nasties. 3. Africanus found numerous additions of name-
less reigns suggested by annotators to belong to Manetho's
tomes, agreeably to what Herodotus had wrote of the Egyp-
tian history : he took these into his collection also, and made
of them his 7th, 8th, 9th, loth, J3th, I4th, i6th, i7th, and
2oth dynasties, though he discarded these again when he
came to compose from the materials he had collected, esteem-
ing Manetho to have really offered no more kings than what
there were names to be found of in his books. 4. Africanus
collected his i8th dynasty, as I have said f , from Josephus.
5. The 3ist dynasty might be added to Manetho by some
later hand, who was minded to remark the Persian kings
unto whom Egypt became tributary, and being thus wrote
into some copies of Manetho, it might come down to Afri-
canus, and not be rejected by him. If we consider Africa-
nus's work in this light, we shall do justice to his characters;
allow him to have been a serious and considerate writer, who

aniter turgentes. Marsham. Can. Chron. temporum olservator, Vossius de Hist,

p. 5- Grsec. 1. ii. c. 15. 'AQptKavov xpovoypa-

e Vid. Chronograph, in Syncell. p. <j>i>v cnrov8d.ffiJ.aTa eV anpififs ireTrovn-

5i,5 2 - ntva Euseb. Ecclesiastic. Histor. 1. vi.

f Vid. quae sup. c. 31.

Julius Africanus accuratissimus

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 169

took true pains to give what he judged a reasonable account
of Manetho's performance, such as might represent it agree-
ing to what he reputed the true chronology of the world.

VI. Pamphilus Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine,
wrote about a century after Africanus : his Chronicon was a
work of the same nature with Africanus's Chronographia :
he divided it into two parts ; the former part contained the
materia chronologica for an universal history ; in the second
part he ranged and synchronized such of the materials col-
lected in the former part as he purposed to make use of; so
as to offer in one view a concurrent plan of the sacred and
profane history. Eusebius began this part of his work from
the birth of Abraham, and carried it down to the 2oth year
of Constantine the Great* 1 : in his former part, amongst other
collections, were the dynasties of Manetho, taken in a great
measure from Africanus's account of them ; though in some
points he differed from Africanus sufficiently to shew us,
that he did not think Africanus to have ascertained in-
disputably the dynasties of Manetho. Eusebius represents
the dynasties down to Nectanebus to contain the names of
but 93 kings, and the reigns that have no names of kings
affixed to them to be but 259. But I would not carry the
reader into a tedious discussion of every little difference be-
tween Africanus and Eusebius upon this subject; their dy-
nasties are described at large in Syncellus 1 ; and whoever
would examine this subject more curiously, may, by consult-
ing his work, see and compare them with one another. How-
ever I cannot but observe, that Eusebius certainly took great
liberty in order to form the dynasties to his own purpose,
sometimes following Africanus, and sometimes the Epitome
of Manetho added to the Chronographeon above mentioned,
and making no scruple to vary from both, if his scheme re-
quired it : for, i . his scheme was to synchronize the last
year of Nectanebus, where Manetho's work ended, with
the 1 667th year from the birth of Abraham k , and to fix to
the birth of Abraham the beginning of the i6th Egyptian

Euseb. Chron. Marsham. p. 6. * Euseb. Chron. ad num.

Syncell. p. 54 78. p. 175.

170 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [iJOOK XT,

dynasty 1 . He supposes that dynasty to contain 5 Theban
kings : herein he followed neither the Epitome of Manetho 11 ,
nor Africanus : however the Epitome suggesting Manetho
to have ascribed 190 years to the i6th dynasty, Eusebius
writes to it the same number. Having thus fixed in what
part of the dynasties he should begin his account, and what
interval of years he had to fill up with Egyptian reigns, he
proceeded as follows : 2. He observed that the Epitome com-
puted 103 years to be the contents of the iyth dynasty P;
accordingly he ascribes the same number of years to it : the
Epitome styles this dynasty Memphite : but Eusebius know-
ing that Manetho had mentioned the Pastor kings, and
counting down from the birth of Abraham, and computing
this dynasty to reach the times of the Israelites being in
Egypt, and conceiving that some of the Egyptian kings had
been called Pastor kings, from their receiving and entertain-
ing Jacob and his children, a family of shepherds ; he took
from hence his title to this dynasty ^, and called it the Pastor
dynasty. 3. The Epitome supposes the i8th dynasty to be
Memphite, the number of kings 14, the sum of their years
348 r : Africanus's i8th dynasty is Diospolitan, the number
of its kings 16, the sum of the years of their reigns 284*.
Here Eusebius, as to the title of the dynasty and number of
reigns in it, corrects the Epitome by Africanus : but in the
sum of years in the reigns he corrects Africanus by the
Epitome, making his 1 8th dynasty Diospolitan, and to con-
tain 16 kings, and their reigns to amount to 348 years t .
4. In the Epitome the I9th dynasty is Diospolitan, the kings
in it are 5, the sum of years in their reigns 194": Africanus's
19th dynasty is likewise Diospolitan, the kings in it are 7,
their reigns 210 years x : but here Eusebius takes the num-

1 Euseb. Chron. ad num. of. p. 89. jicimus nuncupates propter Joseph et

m Syncell. p. 61. Euseb. Chron. fratres ejus, qui in principio pastores

p. 15. descendisse in -^Egyptum comproban-

n TaviTwv t^. Svi/affTtia yeveoav rf '. tur. Chron. Euseb. Lat. p. 64.

T>V p. Epit. Syncell. p. 51. r Syncell. p. 51.

'EKKaiSeKdrr)Svva(rrf(aTroi/J.fVs"E\- s Id. p. 62 7 2 -

\r)V(s /Soo-tAcTs A./3'. tfia.<ri\tv<Tav errj (177'. t Euseb. Chron. a num. <r r '5'. p. 101.

African, in Syncell. p. 61. ad num. XM# ' P- i '8.

P Syncell. p. 51. u Syncell. p. 51.

1 Reges vEgyptiorum Pastores con- * Id. p. 72.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 171

bers of the Epitome, and sets down 5 kings and 194 years y.
5. In the 2Oth dynasty his management is remarkable : the
Epitome supposes this dynasty Diospolitan 2 , and Africanus
gives it this title a . The Epitome numbers in it 8 reigns of
228 years ; Africanus i 2 kings, but has no names of any of
them; he supposes their reigns to amount to 135 years.
Eusebius here copies after Africanus, both in the numbers of
the kings, and in not having the names of any of them ; but
differs from him in the sum of their years, which he sets
down 178. Eusebius seems to me to have chosen this dynasty
to be the closure of his plan : all the other dynasties he
made use of have the names of the kings belonging to
them, and upon that account he was more obliged to fix
them a number of years, such as he had some appearance of
authority to justify, either from the Epitome, or from Africa-
nus: but having here a dynasty without names of kings
contained in it, he could affix to it, without hazard of con-
tradiction, such a number of years, as his other dynasties
would fall short of 1667, which was the term to be filled up
by him. 6. The Epitome and Africanus agree to call the 2ist
dynasty Tanite ; the Epitome gives it 6 reigns, 121 years;
Africanus 7 reigns, 130 years b : Eusebius takes here the
numbers of Africanus. 7. The Epitome calls the 22d dynasty
Tanite ; its reigns are 3, years of reigns 48. Africanus makes
here a Bubastite dynasty, and supposes its reigns 3, years
49 d : Eusebius takes the title of the Epitome, and the num-
bers of Africanus 6 . 8. The 23d dynasty in the Epitome is
Diospolitan, contains 2 kings, their reigns amount to 1 9
years f : in Africanus it is Tanite, consists of 4 kings, whose
reigns make up 89 years ^: Eusebius gives it Africanus's title,
but describes in it 3 kings, and computes their reigns to be
44 years h . 9. The 24th dynasty is Saitan both according to
the Epitome and Africanus 1 . The Epitome supposes it to

y Euseb. Chron. a num. XM$' p. 1 18. e Euseb. Chron. a num. apfj.5'. p. 144.

ad num. Ae'. p. 128. ad num. aplfi . p. 147.

z Syncell. p. 51. f Syncell. ubi sup.

a Id. p. 73. g Id. p. 74.

b Syncell. ubi sup. h Euseb. Chron. a num. ap^y'.

c Id. ibid. p. 147. ad num. 0.0X7' . p. 149.

d Id. p. 73. i Syncell. p. 52, 74.

172 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI,

contain 3 reigns of 44 years ; Africanus says, i reign of
6 years : Eusebius agrees with both as to the title of it, but
ascribes to it Africanus's i reign, with 44, the number of
years set down to it in the Epitome k . 10. The Epitome and
Africanus agree the 25th dynasty to consist of 3 Ethiopian
kings, and their reigns to be 44 years 1 ; and herein Eusebius
concurs with them m . i i . The Epitome supposes the 26th
dynasty to consist of 7 Memphite kings, who reigned 177
years 11 : Africanus represents it to contain 9 Saitan kings,
who reigned 150 years 6 months . Eusebius gives it Afri-
canus's title and number of kings, but makes the years of
their reigns 167 P. 12. The 27th dynasty is, according to
the Epitome, Persian, and contains the reign of 5 kings in
124 yearsq : Africanus reckons it also Persian, but computes
8 kings, reigning 120 years 4 months, to belong to it r : Eu-
sebius styles it Persian, and sets down in it 7 kings, reigning
in years : but these differences are to be accounted for:
Egypt came into subjection to the Persians when Cambyses
was king of Persia 1 , and recovered its liberty in the reign of
Darius Nothus u ; and some writers, not taking into their ac-
counts the Persian kings who did not reign a full year,
might reckon but five kings from the one to the other : others
might number, in their lists of Persian kings, Smerdes the
Magian, who reigned some months, after him Darius Hy-
staspes, then Xerxes, then Artaxerxes, then the son of Arta-
xerxes, who reigned but two months, then Sogdianus, who
reigned seven months, and then Darius Nothus x , and so
with Cambyses make 8 Persian kings in this dynasty. In
like manner, if the years of this dynasty be computed from
the first year of Cambyses's reign in Persia to the last year of
Darius Nothus, they will amount to 124, the number in the
Epitome : if they be reckoned from the fourth or fifth year

k Euseb. Chron. a num. a<r\'. p. 149. q Syncell. p. 52.

ad num. affir'. p. 152. r Id. p. 76.

1 Syncell. ubi sup. s Euseb. Chron. a num. av$&.

m Euseb. Chron. a num. affna'. p. 164. ad num. 0^7'. p. 172.

p. 152. ad num. or/cS 7 . p. 155. * Prideaux, Connect, part i. b. iii.

n Syncell. p. 52. an. 524.

o Id. p. 75. u Id. b. vi.

P Euseb. Chron. a num. arKf. * Consult dean Prideaux's History

p. 155. ad num. ovf'o'. p. 164. of these times

AND 1'KOKANK HISTORY. 173

of Cambyses, the year in which the Persians conquered
Egypt, they may amount to about Africanus's number, 120
years 4 months. If they be more strictly calculated, from
Cambyses's conquest of Egypt, to Amyrtaeus's being made
king upon the revolt of the Egyptians from Darius Nothus,
in about the loth year of Darius's reign y, the interval will
be, as Eusebius reckons it, in years. 13. As to the 28th,
29th, and 3Oth dynasties, if we allow for little mistakes that
may easily happen in transcribing numbers, and consider
that Tanite, Mendesian. and Sebennite, may be terms syno-
nymous, Mendes and Sebenneh having been cities of the
land of Zoan or Tanis 7 , these dynasties in the Epitome, in
Africanus, and in Eusebius, may be conceived to have been
the same. Of this sort the reader, if he examines it, will
find the work of Eusebius, as far as it relates to the Egyp-
tian dynasties. Manetho had left only 15 dynasties of
mortal kings; for his other 15 treated of gods, demi-gods,
and heroes of a superior race a: upon this account Eusebius
in composing his Chronicon rejected 15 of Africanus's dy-
nasties, reputing them prior to the times of which he could
hope to find any true history; and having selected the 15
dynasties of Africanus, from the i6th to the 3oth, and new
modelled them, by comparing them with the like dynasties
added in the Epitome to the old Chronographeon ; some-
times giving his dynasties titles and numbers from the Epi-
tome, sometimes from Africanus, and now and then varying
from both, if his purpose required it ; and having thus
formed such a series of Egyptian reigns as would fill up
his interval between the birth of Abraham, and the flight
of Nectanebus, he gave himself no further trouble ; though
one would think, he could not but have seen that he might
rather be said to have made a way to give the dynasties
some appearance of an agreement to his chronology, than
to have given any true and just account of them.

VII. Syncellus is the next writer we are to go to for
the Egyptian antiquities : he composed his Chronographia

y See Prideaux's Connect, part i. book vi. z Strabo Geograph.
a Vid. quae sup. de Manethone.

174 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI,

about the year of our Lord 800 a : he transcribed into it
what remains he could find of the more ancient writers,
and some extracts from others, who had composed before
him a work of like nature with what he attempted. Accord-
ingly we find in him the contents of the old Chronogra-
pheon b , of Manetho's dynasties , of African us's d and Euse-
bius's 6 , agreeably to what he judged to be the scheme and
purport of each of them : and in many places we have his
strictures and observations, as he goes along, upon the mat-
ters offered by them : he has also given us Eratosthenes's
catalogue of the Thebsean kings f . He remarks, that the
dynasty writers must have supposed their 27th dynasty,
which they call Persians, to have begun when Cambyses
king of Persia conquered Egypt?. Amasis was king of Egypt
at that time h : and to this Amasis he brings down a list of 85
kings of Egypt, from Menes their first king, setting against
each king^s name the years of his reign as follows : i. Me-
straim or Menes reigned 35 years, n. Curudes 63. in. Ari-
starchus 34. iv. Spanius 36. v. vi. Two kings, whose
names are lost; their reigns amounted to 72 years, vn. Se-
rapis 23. vni. Sejouchosis 49. ix. Amenemes 29*. x. Ama-
sis 2. xi. Achesepthres 13. xn. Achoreus 9. xin. Ar-
miyses 4. xiv. Chamois I2 k . xv. Amesises 65. xvi. -
14. xvn. Use 50. xvin. Harnesses 29 1 . xix. Ramesso-
menes 15. xx. Thusimares 31. xxi. Ramesse-seos 23.
xxn. Ramesse-menos 19. xxin. Ramesse-Tubaete 39 m .
xxiv. Ramesse-Vaphris 29. xxv. Concharis 5". xxvi. Si-
lites 19. xxvn. Bseon 44 P. xxvin. Apachnas 36. xxix.
Apophis 61^. xxx. Sethos 50. xxxi. Certus, according to
Josephus 29 years, according to Mauetho 44. xxxn. Aseth
20 r . xxxin. Amosis, who was also called Tethmosis, 22 s .

a Marsham's Can. Chron. p. 7. Voss. k Xa/j.ois /cr'. Euseb, p. 18.
de Historic. Graec. lib. ii. c. 24. 1 Syncell. p. 96. Vid. Euseb. Chron.

b Syncell. p. 51. p. 18.

c Ibid. p. 52. m Syncell. p. 101. Euseb. p. 20.

d Ibid. p. 54 77. n Syncell. p. 103. Euseb. 21.

e Ibid. Syncell. p. 104. Euseb. 21.

f Ibid. p. 91, &c. P Bat&v Afl'. Euseb. p. 22.

g Ibid. p. 210. <l Syncell. p. 108. Euseb. 22.

h Ibid. r 'AffW K&. in margine Syncell. p.

i Ibid. p. 91. Vid. Euseb. Chron. p. 123.
17,18. s Syncell. ibid. Euseb. 23.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 175

xxxiv. Chebron 13. xxxv. Amephes 15. xxxvi. A menses

11. xxxvu. Misphragmuthosis 16. xxxvm. Misphres 23.
xxxix. Tuthmosis 39 l . XL. Amenophtis 34". XLI. Horus
48. XLII. Achencheres 25. XLIII. Athoris 29. XLIV. Chen-
cheres 26*. XLV. Acheres 8, or 30. XLVI. Armseus or Da-
naus gy. XLVII. Rameses, who was also called ^Egyptus, 68.
XLVIII. Amenophis 8. XLIX. Thuoris 17. L. Nechepsus 19.

LI. Psammuthis 13. LII. 4 Z . LIII. Certus 20 l . LIV.

Rhampsis 45. LV. Amenses or Amenemes 26 b . LVI. Ochyras
14. LVII. Amedes 27. LVIII. Thuoris 50. LIX. Athothis
28. LX. Cencenes 39. LXI. Venephes 42 d . LXII. Sussachim
34 e . LXIII. Psuenus 25. LXIV. Ammenophes 9. LXV. Ne-
phecheres 6. LXVI. Saites 15. LXVII. Psinaches 9. LXVIII.
Petubastes 44. LXIX. Osorthron 9. LXX. Psammus 10.
LXXI. Concharis 21 f . LXXII. Osorthron 15. LXXIII. Tace-
lophes 13. LXXIV. Bocchoris 44. LXXV. Sabacon ^Ethiops

12. LXXVI. Sebechon 12?. LXXVII. Taracas 20. LXXVIII.
Amaes 38. LXXIX. Stephinates 27. LXXX. Nachepsus 13 h .
LXXXI. Nechaab 8. LXXXII. Psammitichus 14. LXXXIII. Ne-
chaab the second, called Pharaoh 9. LXXXIV. Psammuthis or
Psammitichus the second 17. LXXXV. Vaphres 34. LXXXVI.
Amasis 50'.

It is queried by the learned whence Syncellus collected
this series of Egyptian kings k . Scaliger imagined him to
have found it in the Chronicon of Eusebius, and accordingly,
in his attempt to retrieve us that work, he has inserted
these kings amongst others of Eusebius's collections. But
in this point Scaliger must have been mistaken : we have no
reason to imagine this catalogue to have ever been in Euse-
bius : it seems rather to have been, a great part of it, Syn-
cellus's own composition, who imagined he could in this
manner deduce the Egyptian kings. If the reader will

t Syncell. p. 147. Euseb. 25. d Syncell. p. 170. Euseb. 33.

u Syncell. p. 151. Euseb. 26. e Syncell. p. 177. Euseb. 34.

x lid. ibid. f Ibid.

y Syncell. p. 155. Euseb. 29. S Syncell. p. 184. Euseb. 36.

z "ET-TJ ie. Euseb. p. 30. h Syncell. p. 19 r. Euseb. 38.

a "Err/ ij8'. Euseb. ibid. i Syncell. p. 210. Euseb. 46, 47.

l> Syncell. p. 160. Euseb. .10. k Marsham, Can. Chron. p. 7.
c Syncell. p. 169. Euseb. Chr. p. 32.

176 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

strictly examine it, he will find, that the kings from the
49th to the 86th, might be taken from Africanus's 19th,
2ist, 22(1, 23d, 24th, 25th, and 26th dynasties; only Syn-
cellus has now and then added or repeated a name of a
king or two, and given new numbers to all their reigns,
such probably as suited the scheme he had formed for the
Egyptian chronology. From the 33d king to the 48th,
we have a catalogue of Theban kings formed from consi-
dering and comparing Josephus's list with Africanus and
Eusebius's i8th dynasty. The kings from the 26th to the
32d are taken from Josephus, Africanus, and Eusebius's
account of the Pastor kings. From Mestraim or Menes the
ist king, to Concharis the 25th, Syncellus does indeed offer
a series of reigns, which we do not now meet with in any
writer before him : and perhaps, as Africanus mistook, and
gave us a series of Thinite kings in his first and second
dynasties, instead of Manetho's Tanite kings 1 ; so here Syn-
cellus, from some ancient quotations or remains, has hap-
pened upon the succession of Tanite kings, which might
begin Manetho's accounts of the mortal kings ; though I
dare say he had no true notion of the nature of it: for
Syncellus had certainly formed no right judgment of the
Egyptian history, as appears evidently from his declaring
that he knew no use of, nor occasion for, Eratosthenes's
catalogue of Theban kings" 1 . He found the fragment above
mentioned ; he saw it differed from all other collections, and
intended himself to differ from all others who had wrote
before him; for this reason, and probably for no other, he
began his catalogue with it: he added to it the Pastor and
Theban kings from Josephus, and completed it with taking
as many names of kings from Africanus and other writers
as he thought he wanted; and having taken the liberty to
give to the several reigns of these later kings, not the num-
bers of years assigned them by the writers from whom he
took them ; but such as might bring down the succession in
a manner suitable to his own chronology ; this was his at-
tempt towards clearing the Egyptian history n . The reader, if

1 See the notes in page [44. n Sir John Marsham says very justly

m\ T id. Syncell. p. 147. of Syncellus, Reges comminiscitur an-

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 177

he examines it, will after all find that Syncellus's catalogue
is somewhat too long for the interval to which he intended
to adjust it. But the learned are apprised that Syncellus's
work is in many places inaccurate in this matter.

VIII. We are in the last place to consider what our
learned countryman sir John Marsham has done upon this
subject. And, i. he considered Egypt to have been divided
into four concurrent kingdoms in the most early ages,
namely, into the kingdoms of Thebes, of This, of Mem-
phis, and of Tanis, or lower Egypt . 2. He formed a canon,
or table, that might offer the reader in one view the con-
temporary kings of each kingdom. And, 3. in the execu-
tion of his work in proper chapters, he endeavours to justify
the position of the kings according to the succession in the
respective columns of his canon assigned to them. The
following tables will give the reader a view of sir John
Marsham's succession of the Egyptian kings, from Menes,
the first king over all Egypt, to the times of Sesac, who
came against Jerusalem in the 5th year of EehoboamP.

nosque et successiones mutilat vel ex- prehensioni maanime obnoxius. Can.

tendit, prout ipsi visum est, ut impru- Chron. p. 7.

dentiam hominis non possis tton mirari, o Id. p. 24.

qui cum aliis rixatur, ipse cum ait re- P 2 Chron. xii. 2, 3.

178

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED

[BOOK xi.

I. TABLE OF SIR JOHN MARSHAM'S KINGS OF
EGYPT.

Kings of
Thebes
taken from
Eratosthenes.

Kings of
This
taken from
Manetho.

Kings of
Memphis
taken from
Manetho.

Kings of
Lower Egypt
taken from
Syncellus.

Reigned years,

i . Menes 62

i. Menes 62

Menes built

i. Menes or

i. Dynast.

Memphis

Mestraim 35

African. Syn-

Herodot. 1. ii. c.

Syncell. p. 91.

cell. p. 54.

99.

in. Dyn. Afric.

2. Curudes 63

2. Athothes 59

2. Athothes 57

Syncell. p. 56.

i . Tosorthrus 29

3.Aristarchus 3/1

2. Tyris 7

3. Cencenes 31

3. Athothes 32

3 . Mesochris i 7

4. Spanius 36

4. Soiphis 1 6

5. Tosertasis 19

4. Diabies 19

4. Venephes 23

6. Achis 42

5 .**** 32

5. Pemphos 18

5 . Usaphsedus 20

6. Tsegar Ama-

6. Miebidus 26

chus Momche-

iri 79

7. Siphuris 30

6. * * * * 40

7. Semempsis 18

8. Cerpheres 26

8. Bienaches 26

7. Serapis 23

iv. Dyn. Afric.

n. Dyn. Afric.

7. Staechus 6

9. Soris 29

9. Bochus 38

8.Sesonchosis49

8. Gosormies 30

10. Syphis 63

9. Mares 26

10. Keachos 39

9. Amenemes 29

Syncell. p. 96.

10. Amasis 2

10. Anoyphes20

ii. Binothris 47

1 1 . Syphis 66

n. Acheseph-

thres i 3

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

179

Kings of

Kings of Kings of

Thebes.

This.

Memphis. Lower Egypt.

1 1. Sirius 1 8

12. Achoreus 9

13. Armiyses 4

12. Chnubus

14. Chamois 12

Gneurus 22

1 5 . Amesises 65

13. Ranosis 13

12. Tlas 17

14. Biyris 10

13. Sethenes 41

16. *** 14

15. Saophis 29

12. Mencheres

1 6. Sen-Saophis

17. Use 50

14. Cheres 17

15. Nepherche-

i 8. Ramesses 29

1 7 . Moscheris 3 1

res 25

13. Ratseses 25

Syncell. p. 101.

1 6. Sesochris 48

1 8. Musthis 33

14. Bicheres 22

19. Ramessome-

nes 15

15. Seber-cheres

20. Thusimares

17. Cheneres 30

19. Pammus

1 6. Thamptis 9

2i.Ramesseos23

Archondes 35

22. Ramesseme-

vi. Dyn. Afric.

nos 9

23.Ramesse-Tu-

1 8. Nechero-

17. Othoes

baete 39

phes 28

1 8. Phius 53

20. Apappus

19. Methusu-

Syncell. p. 103.

Maximus 100

Here the king-

phis 7

dom of This

ended.

21. Achescus

20. Phiops 100

24. Ramesse-

Ocaras i

Sum of the

Vaphres 29

Years 593

25. Concharis 6

i2i. Mentesu-

22. Nitocris 6

phis i

22. Nitocris 12

Sum of the

Years 676

Years 643

Years 701

VOL. IT.

180 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

In this manner sir John Marsham deduces the account of
the ancient kings of Egypt, down to the time of the Pastors'
eruption q. The Pastors invaded Egypt in the reign of Ti-
mseus 1 ". Sir John Marsham supposes Concharis to have
been the king whom Josephus calls Timaeus s : and agree-
ably hereto Syncellus conceived Silites or Salads, who was
the first Pastor-king f , to have succeeded Concharis, his 25th
king of lower Egypt u . Nitocris is thought to have been the
last of the crowned heads of Memphis ; for we find in Afri-
canus no name of any king of this kingdom after her x , and
therefore here we are to fix the period or dissolution of it ;
and we find that the Pastors overran not only the lower
Egypt, but they took Memphis Y, and possesssed themselves
of this kingdom also. Nitocris was queen not only of Mem-
phis, but likewise of Thebes ; for we find her name 22d in
Eratosthenes's Theban catalogue. Sir John Marsham ob-
serves, that her predecessor in both kingdoms reigned but
one year, and the king before him in both kingdoms exactly
an hundred 2 : he judiciously concludes from hence, that
Apappus Maximus, king of Thebes, and Phiops, king of
Memphis, were but one and the same person, as were also
Acheschus Ocaras and Mentesuphis, who succeeded in each
kingdom, and that the kingdoms of Memphis and Thebes
were united two reigns at least before Nitocris a . She is
recorded to have reigned 12 years at Memphis, and but 6 at
Thebes. I suppose Memphis was, at her coming to the
throne, the seat of her kingdom : she was obliged to retire
out of this country when the Pastors invaded it, and after
this retreat she reigned six years at Thebes. The kingdom
of This did not last until the invasion of the Pastors ; very
probably the Theban kings, when they grew powerful by

1 Marsham. p. 18, 20. alXevaev 'A%(rbs 'Ondpas eras a'. Era-

r Josephus contra Ap. 1. i. c. 14. tosth. in Syncell. p. 104. "EKTTJ Awa-

9 Marsham. p. 91, 98,, &c. ffrtiuv paa-iXecav Mfj.<pirwv 8'. 4>io4

t Joseph, contra Ap. 1. i. c. 14, &c. e^aer^s ap^Afjitvos /3a<ri\eviv Sieyevero

u Syncell. p. 103,104. M-^XP 15 ^rcav p . c'. MevreffovQts eraser.

x Vid. Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 90. African, in Syncell. p. 58.
7 Joseph, lib. i. contra Ap. c. 14. a Ista regnandi sequalis inaequalitas

z -r)&alcav '. eficuriXeixrev 'Airdtnrovs nimis insolita est, ut illam bis et simul

/jLfyicrTos' OVTOS &s <pa.a\v irapb &pav /j.iav fortuito contigisse credamus. Marsham.

err) p'. f&a<ri\ev(rev r?/3cuW KO!. ^80- p. 85.

AKD PEOFANE HISTORY. 181

the accession of the kingdom of Memphis, added this little
domain to their territories 13 . Upon these hints and obser-
vations sir John Marsham has opened us a prospect of
coming at an history of the succession of the kings of Egypt,
and that in a method so natural and easy*, that it must ap-
prove itself to any person that enters truly into the design
and conduct of it. He gives us Eratosthenes's Theban kings ;
he ranges with these, Syncellus's 25 kings of Mestrsea, or
lower Egypt ; and by taking Africanus's dynasties in
pieces, by separating the Thinite dynasties from the Mem-
phite, by collecting the kings of each title into a distinct
catalogue, he offers us two other concurrent lists of the
names of the kings of the other two kingdoms,

There is one difficulty which I wish our very learned
author had considered and discussed for us, and that is, that
the catalogues of the kings of three of the four kingdoms
are too long to come within the intervals of time which
the true chronology of the world can allow for them. For
to begin with lower Egypt. Menes, or the Mizraim of
Moses d , came into this country about A. M. i772 e t it was
a fen or marsh in his time f , and he does not seem to have
made a long stay in it. He went forward and built Mem-
phisS; afterwards, 124 years after the dispersion of man-
kind 11 , A. M. 1 88 1, he went into the country of Thebais :
after having made settlements here, he seems to have come
back, and formed a kingdom in lower Egypt 35 years before
his death; for Menes stands recorded king of this country
only 35 years'; if so, then this kingdom was founded about
A. M. J9o8 k . The Pastors came into Egypt about A. M.
2420 l : the interval is 512 years : but the 25 kings of lower
Egypt above mentioned reigned 701 years; i. e. 189 years
longer than we can find a space of time for them. Irj like

b Id. ibid. Syncell. p. 147.

c Syncell. p. 91. i Mecrrpatfj. 6 Kal M-fjvrjs err] Ac'. Syn-

d See vol. i. book iv. cell. p. 91.

e Ibid. k Menes died A. M. 1943. See

f Herodot 1. ii. c. 4. vol. i. book iv.

Id. c. 99. 1 See vol. ii. book viii.

h Apollod. in Euseb. Chron. p. 18.

N 2

182 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK xi.

manner, 2. If we consider the Theban kings : Mizraim
came into this country A. M. i88i m , let us from this year
begin the computation of his reign or kingdom : from this
year to A. M. 2420, the year of the invasion of the Pastors,
are 539 years ; but the reigns of the Theban kings from
Menes to the I2th year after 11 the decease of Achescus
Ocaras, the predecessor of Nitocris, are 682 years ; so that
this catalogue reaches down beyond the incursion of the
Pastors 170 years. 3. The kingdom of This is recorded to
begin from the 62d year before the death of Menes ; from
the year of the rise of the kingdom of Thebes A. M. 1881 :
the reigns of the kings of This amount to 593 years P ; but
from A. M. 1881 to 2420, the year of the Pastors are but, as
I said, 539 years ; so that this catalogue is too long by 54
years. As to the kingdom of Memphis, a better account
of that seems to offer itself to us. Menes entered Egypt
A.M. 1772*1 : he stayed but a little while in the lower
Egypt, perhaps about 3 years, until he had formed Zoan, a
little town, which was built 7 years after Hebron in Ca-
naan 1 ": here he might plant a few inhabitants, and go for-
ward and build Noph or Memphis higher up the country,
and designing to go himself a further progress, he might
make his son Toserthrus, or Naphtuhim 5 , the first governor
or king of this city about A. M. 1777; accordingly the
reigns in the Meniphite dynasties begin not from Menes,
but from Toserthrus *. The sum of the reigns from the
first year of Toserthrus to the lath of Mtrocris are 643
years, which, if we count down from A. M. 1777, will
bring us to A. M. 2420, the year in which I suppose the
Pastors entered Egypt, and reduced this kingdom. Thus
the Memphite succession very fully accords to true chrono-

m Vid. quae sup. and vol. i. b. iv. have reigned afterwards 6 years at

n We must compute in this man- Thebes.

ner, if we allow Achescus Ocaras to African, in Syncell. p. 54.

have been the same person with Men- P Vid. Tab. seu Can.

tesuphis, who was Nitocris' s predecessor Q Vid. quse sup.

in the Memphite catalogue, and sup- r Numb. xiii. 22.

pose Nitocris to have reigned 12 years s See vol. i. b. iv. Gen. x. 13.

at Memphis, and then, being obliged t African, in Syncell. p. 56.
to quit that country by the Pastors, to

AN1) PROFANE HISTORY. 183

logy, and probably, if the other successions were carefully
examined, a little pains would enable us to bring them to
an agreement with it. For

The catalogue of Mestraean kings exceeds indeed in length
about 189 years ; but I apprehend some interpolations
made by Syncellus are the cause of it. Three of the
reigns, the 5th, 6th, and i6th, are mere numbers, without
names of kings annexed to them : and Serapis the yth king,
Sesonchosis the 8th u , Amanemes the 9th x , and Amasis the
lothr, are all names of kings inserted here by Syncellus to
lengthen the catalogue, so as to make it suit his scheme of
chronology. Syncellus took great liberties in this manner 2 .
The numbers of years affixed to all these reigns amount to
the 189: if we therefore strike out these reigns, we reduce
the catalogue to a true measure. I would not be too tedious
to the reader, and shall therefore leave it to him, if he cares
to enter deeper into this subject, to consider, whether the
Theban and Thinite catalogues may not be as well adjusted,
if they be examined and corrected in a proper manner.

From the Pastors invading and completing their conquests
in Egypt, our learned author considers the country as
parted into but two kingdoms: the Pastors possessed the
land of Memphis, and of Tanis, or lower Egypt; the The-
bans, whom the Pastors did not conquer, held their own
country, and had added the land of This to it. Africanus
indeed suggests a dynasty of Elephantine kings, supposing
nine successions of them a : Elephantis was a remote city in
the most southern parts of Egypt b , above 200 miles higher
up into the country than Thebes or Diospolis c . The names
of kings supposed to be of this kingdom have a great simili-
tude with those of the kings of This, -and perhaps some

u Sesonchosis was the 'same person such kings in this age.

as Sesostris, vid. Scholiast, in Apoll. z Reges comminiscitur, annosque et

Argonaut, lib. iv. v. 272. and lived in successiones mutilat vel extendit, pro-

a much later age. ut ipsi visum est, magna nominum,

x Amanemes is again repeated by maxima numerorum interpolatione.

Syncellus, and is his 55th king. Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 7.

F Amasis is his 88th. He disguises a African. Dynast, v. in Syncell.

the repetition of the names of Amane- p. 57.

mes and Amasis, by giving different *> Herodot. lib. ii. c. 17, 18, 29.

numbers of years to their reigns : but c Id. c. 9.
we have no reason to think there were

184 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

little companies of Thinites, when the Thebans conquered
their country, might travel into this distant region, and
plant themselves here, and build a city, and have a quiet
enjoyment of it for above two centuries d . We find no
history, nor any thing recorded of these Elephantines ; and
probably after having lived for the space above mentioned
in a little independent society, at the end of that term, the
Thebans extending and enlarging their country, they might
at last become a city or district of their kingdom. The
following table will give the reader a view of sir John
Mar sham's continuation of the Theban kings, and of the
succession of the Pastor reigns, until the Pastors were expelled
Egypt.

d The reigns supposed by Africanus to belong to this dynasty amount to
118 years.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

185

II. TABLE OF EGYPTIAN KINGS.

Continuation of Eratosthenes'
Theban Kings.

Pastor Kings from Manetho, &c.

See Joseph, and African, xv.

Dynast.

23. Myrteeus 22

24. Thuosi Mares 12

25. Thinillus 8

26. Semphrucrates 18

27. Chouther Taurus 7

28. Meuros Philoscorus 12

29. Choma Eptha 1 1

30. Anchunius Ochy Tyrannus 60

31. Pente-Athyris 16

32. Stameneines 23

33 . Sistosichermes 55

34. Mseris 43

35. Siphoas or Mercury 5

3<5. a 14

37. Phruron or Nilus 5

38. Amuthantseus 63

Here ends the Catalogue of
Eratosthenes.

From Manetho xvm. Dynasty of
Africanus. See Josephus.

39. Amosis 25 4

40. Chebron

41 . Amenophis 27 7

42. Amesses 21 9

43. Mephres 12 9

44. Misphragmuthosis. ... 25 IQ

1. Salatis 19

2. Bseon 44

3. Apachnas 36 7

4. Apophes 6j

5. Janias 50 i

6. Assis 40 2

xxi. Dyn. African. b in Syn-
cell. p. 123.

7. Smedes 26

8. Psusenes 46

9. Nephelcheres 4

10. Amenopthis 9

1 1 . Osocher 6

12. Pinaches 9

13. Susennes 14

xxni. Dyn. Afric.

14. Petubates 40

15. Osorcho 8

1 6. Psammus i o

17. Zoet 31

a Sir John Marsham passes over this
reign, there being no name annexed to
it, and supposes Nilus to succeed Mer-
cury, and Eratosthenes' s catalogue to
contain but 37 kings. Can. Chron.
p. 94. 238.

h It may be here remarked, that

both Manetho and Africanus (see
Chronograph, in Syncell. p. 52. Afri-
can. Dyn. p. 74.) style this dynasty
Tanite : but to this it may be an-
swered, that the Pastors, possessing the
land of Tanis, or lower Egypt, were the
Tanite kings of these times.

186 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

Misphragmuthosis, or Alisfragmuthosis, gave the Pastors a
great overthrow in battle, and shut them up in Abaris,
where he confined them by a close siege c . His son was

45. Tuthmosis 9 years 8 months.

The Pastors capitulated with this king at his coming to the
crown, and surrendered upon condition to be suffered to
march out of Egypt d . Next to Tuthmosis or Tummosis
reigned

46. Amenophis 30 years 10 months.

In the reign of this king the Pastors invaded Egypt again,
and for 13 years dispossessed him of his kingdom; but at
the end of that term Amenophis came with an army, and
entirely conquered them, and expelled them Egypt for
ever 6 ; and at this their second expulsion, the 511 years are
computed to end, during which the Pastors are said to have
held Egypt f .

After this second expulsion of the Pastors, sir John
Marsham adds the following Theban kings sole monarchs
of all Egypt.

Yrs. M.

47. Orus reigned 36 5

48. Achenchres 12 I

49. E-athotis 9 o

50. Acencheres 12 5

51. Acencheres 12 3

52. Armais 4 I

53. Harnesses i 4

54. Harnesses Miamun 66 2

55. Amenophis 19 6

xix. Dynast. African.

56. Sethosis, Sesostris, or Sesac.

c Joseph, contra Ap. I. i. c. 14. Tuthmosis is 9 years 8 months : if

d Id. ibid. the Pastors invaded Egypt again in the

e Id. ibid. 26, 28. Marsham. Can. loth year of Amenophis, and were

Chron. p, 318. totally conquered 13 years after, this

f The Pastor reigns above men- conquest of them will indeed fall 511

tioned from Salatis to Zet amount to years from the first year of Salatis.

478 years 10 months; the reign of

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 187

The reader has now before him a view of sir John
Marsham's scheme from the beginning of the reigns of the
Egyptian kings down to his Sesostris or Sesac : and if he
will take the pains throughly to examine it, if he will take
it in pieces into all its parts, review the materials of which
it is formed, consider how they lie in the authors from
whom they are taken, and what manner of collecting and
disposing them is made use of, he will find, that however
in some lesser points a variation from our very learned author
may be defensible, yet no tolerable scheme can be formed
of the ancient Egyptian history, that is not in the main
agreeing with him. Sir John Marsham has led us to a
clear and natural place for the name of every Egyptian
king, and time of his reign, who is mentioned by either
Eratosthenes, Africanus from Manetho, Josephus, or Syn-
cellus, that we can reasonably think had a real place in the
Egyptian history ; for as to the name of the king in Africa-
nus's Qth dynasty, called a dynasty of kings of Heracleo-
polisg, Manetho made no such dynasty h . Africanus found
out one of the names of the kings of it 1 . Heracleotis,
Heracleopolis, or Heroopolis, was a city of lower Egypt,
near one of the mouths or outlets of the Nile into the sea k :
perhaps it was a town not immediately reduced by the
Pastors, and its holding out, and preserving its liberty for
some time, might occasion the writers of after-ages to think
it had been an independent kingdom, and to endeavour to
form dynasties of the kings of it. In like manner we may
remark concerning Africanus's 22d dynasty, which he calls
Bubastite: Bubastus was a city of lower Egypt 1 , probably
governed by magistrates, deputies to the Pastors ; or it might
perhaps revolt from the Tanite or Pastor kings, when the
Thebans began to weaken and distress them, and become a
free town, and have governors of its own for some suc-
cessions towards the end of the times of the Pastors being in

e African, in Syncell. p. 59. k Strabo, Geograph. 1. ii. p. 85. ed.

h Vid. Chronograph, in Syncell. p Par. 1620.

5 2 ; l Strabo, Geograph. 1. xvii. p. 805.

i African, ubi sup.

188 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XI.

Egypt ; and some mention of this sort having been made of
it, might occasion after-writers to number its magistrates
amongst the kings of Egypt. But Manetho made no such
dynasty ; accordingly sir John Marsham does not collect
these kings. Were there indeed any such kings, a place
might be found them, by setting them down contemporaries
with some of the last Pastor or Tanite kings. Sir John
Marsham has not taken into this part of his Canon the
kings of the nth, i2th, and I9th dynasties of Africanus :
the reader may see his reasons for omitting them m . I should
think a different account from that of our most learned
author may be given of them n ; but I shall offer what I
conceive to be the true account of these kings, when I
come down to the times succeeding after the reigns of
Sesac, where I shall be also able with less trouble and more
perspicuity to adjust Eratosthenes's Canon of Theban kings,
and sir John Marsham's supplement of reigns added to it
to a true length. As they now stand in his Canon, Nitocris
the 22d in Eratosthenes must be thought to have reigned
about A.M. 2420. The 16 reigns succeeding hers to the
end of Eratosthenes's catalogue contain 374 years ; the 17
reigns added to these by sir John Marsham, from Amosis
to Sesothis, Sesostris, or Sesac, contain 354 years ; add
these together, and we come down to A.M. 3148: but
Sesac came against Jerusalem A. M. 3033 P ; so that here
again the Theban list of kings appears to be of too great a
length by above 115 years.

If the Pastors came into Egypt as above about A. M.
2420, and their first king Salatis reigned 19 years, their
second king Beon reigned 44, and their third king Apophis
36 years and 7 months 4, the end of Apophis's reign falls
A. M. 2520 ; so that he was the Pharaoh or king of lower
Egypt, who pursued the Israelites and perished in the
Red sea. The exit of the Israelites out of Egypt, and their

m Cau. Chron. p. 391, 392. P Usher's Annals,

n Vid. quse supra. <1 Vid. Joseph, contra Ap, lib. i.

Vid. Eratosth. vid. Marsham. p. c. 14. Marsham. Can. Chron. p. 94,
96.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 189

passing over the Red sea, happened A.M. 2513. But the
judicious reader will not expect to be ascertained of our
having all the numeral characters in the Egyptian reigns
so truly calculated or conveyed down to us, that the dif-
ference between A.M. 2513 and 2520, of 6 or 7 years, can
want to be accounted for.

THE

SACRED AND PROFANE
HISTORY OF THE WORLD

CONNECTED.

BOOK xir.

IN the first month of the fortieth year after the exit out of
Egypt, A. M. 2553, the Israelites came into the deserts of
Sin a , and pitched their tents at Kadesh. Mizraim died soon
after their coming hither b . They found little or no water in
these parts, and as soon as their wants made them uneasy,
they murmured against Moses and Aaron c . Moses and
Aaron consulted God for a supply, and Moses was ordered
to go with Aaron, and gather the assembly : Moses was then
to take Aaron's rod, and he and Aaron were to speak unto
a rock in the desert, and the rock was to pour out water in
the sight of all the Israelites 11 . We have had no mention of
the Israelites from the time of the rebellion of Korah, Da-
than, and Abiram, until they came into this difficulty.
There had passed six or seven and thirty years in this inter-
val ; during which time Moses had led them up and down

a Numb. xx. i. b ibid. c Numb. xx. 3, 4, 5. d Ver. 8. .

192 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

from place to place 6 , as God had thought fit to direct their
journey ings by the cloud that moved before them f : and it is
probable that during all this space of time the people had
been very obedient; for we hear of no discontents or oppo-
sitions amongst them. This was their first emotion. Now
they began to be refractory again ; but Moses now could not
so well bear it : he was here transported beyond his usual
temper : the murmurings of the people provoked his spirit,
so that he spake unadvisedly with his lipss. He and Aaron
here committed a fault, for which God pronounced against
them, that they should not bring the people into the land,
which he had given them h . The commentators appear in
some doubt, what the fault was which Moses and Aaron
were here guilty of; but I should think it a point not hard
to be determined. When Moses undertook the charge of
the people after they were over the Red sea, it was strictly
required of him, that he should be punctually obedient to
all the directions which God should give him 1 : he was to
be a minister of the power of God unto his people, and in all
his actions to be faithful to him that appointed him\ to pro-
mote his glory; to convince the people that the Lord was
really their God, and that there was none else besides him,
who could protect and assist them, or whom they ought to
worship. And this Moses had hitherto observed in all his
conduct : but in the instance before us there is a failure in
his behaviour. When the people were in distress here by
want of water, God vouchsafed to hear their complaint, and
directed Moses and Aaron to give them a demonstration,
that his power was ready at hand miraculously to relieve
them. They had been once before in the same strait : then
God thought fit to cause a rock, upon Moses's striking it
with his rod, to pour forth water 1 . But here Moses and
Aaron were commanded to take the rod; to go and stand
before a rock appointed them, having summoned the peo-
ple to see how God would relieve them ; then they were

e Numb, xxxiii. * Exod. xiv.

f Exod. xl. 36, 37. k Heb. iii. 2.

S Psalm cvi. 33. * Exod. xvii.
h Numb. xx. 12.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 193

to speak only to the rock, and the rock was to give forth
water. Had the Israelites been here prone to entertain any
superstitious fancy of the virtue of that rod, which had been
the instrument of so many miracles, what an opportunity
had Moses of convincing them of their folly, and evidencing
to them, that neither himself nor Aaron nor the rod was
of any importance, but that God could have perfected the
same wonders by a word only, if he had thought fit to have
done them in that manner ! But, instead of thus discharging
himself, he took the rod, and he and Aaron gathered the
congregation, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels ;
must we fetch you water out of this rock ? And Moses lift up
his hand, and smote the rock twice ; and the water came out
abundantly. In this he spoke and acted unadvisedly"; for
he did not speak nor act according to the commission which
God had given him ; but he spake and acted of himself, too
great an argument of an affectation of raising his own
credit; for lie that speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory .
Moses expressed himself to have had this sense of things
upon another occasion. When Nadab and Abihu offered
strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them
not, Moses remonstrated their crime to Aaron in the clearest
terms, and declared that God would be sanctified in them
that come nigh him, and glorified before all the people?. But
here he and Aaron joined in a part very different from these
sentiments : their duty was to have glorified God in the
sight of the congregation, by punctually performing what
he had directed : but, instead of this, they did and said what
he commanded them not, and thereby gave the Israelites an
opportunity to imagine the supply might come from them ;
from their power and ability to procure it : and for this
reason, because they were not strictly careful to promote
the glory of God, instead of raising their own credit^ among

m Numb. xx. 10, n. lated : Because ye were not faithful to

n Psalm cvi. 33. me, to [sanctify or] glorify me in the

John vii. 18. eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye

P Levit. x. 3. shall not bring this congregation into the

Q The i2th verse of the 2Oth chap- land which I have given them.
ter of Numbers should be thus trans-

194 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

the people, they were sentenced not to lead the Israelites
into the land of Canaan.

Kadesh, near which the Israelites were at this time en-
camped, was a city upon the border of the land of Edom r ;
and from the neighbourhood of this place Moses sent mes-
sengers unto the king of Edom, to ask leave to march
through his country 8 . The Israelites had received a strict
charge not to 'make any attempt against this people, and
Moses's message was in terms of the greatest assurance of
friendship to them: he acknowledged the relation between
them and Israel, and promised in the most explicit manner,
that he would only pass through their country, without
foraging any part of it, or injuring any person inhabitant of
it u . But the Edomites were not willing to run the venture.
Hitherto they had been governed by dukes x ; but about
this time, apprehending danger, they made a king, thinking
it necessary to unite under one head for their common pre-
servation : and this king of Edom refused to admit the
Israelites into his territories, and guarded his frontiers with
numerous forces Y: hereupon the Israelites were obliged to
march another way, and therefore moved from Kadesh to
mount Hor. Upon mount Hor Aaron died, and Eleazar his
son was appointed high priest in his place 2 . Aaron was an
hundred and twenty-three years old when he died in mount
Hor a , and died there in the fortieth year after the children
of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt b , and so died

A:M. 2553.

The king of Arad, a city in the southern parts of Canaan,
upon the Israelites' coming near his borders, attacked them,
and took some of them prisoners . The Israelites had offered
no violence to his country, and were so provoked at this
attempt upon them, that they vowed a vow unto the Lord,
that, if they should hereafter be able, they would utterly
destroy this people d : and they were enabled, and did per-

r Numb. xx. 16. z Numb. xx. 22 29.

s Ver. 14. a Ch. xxxiii. 39.

t Deut. ii. 4 6. b Ver. 38.

u Numb. xx. 17 19. c Ch. xxi. i.

x See vol. ii. b. vii. d Ver. 2.
y Numb. xx. 1 8. 20.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 195

form this vow in the days of Joshua 6 , or in a little time
after his death f . The 3d verse of this 2ist chapter of Num-
bers seems to intimate, that the Israelites at this time con-
quered these. Canaanites, and utterly destroyed them and
their cities : but this was not fact ; for the king of Arad is
one of those who were conquered by Joshua g ; and the
vengeance here threatened was either executed upon this
people by his hand, or completed by Judah and Simeon,
when they slew the Canaanites that inhabited Zephath, and
utterly destroyed it h . The kingdom of Arad was not con-
quered in the days of Moses, and therefore we cannot ima-
gine that the remark here inserted, that the Lord hearkened
unto the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites, and
they utterly destroyed them and their cities, was of his writing.
I should think Moses left the text thus : And Israel vowed a
vow unto the Lord, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this
people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities ; and
called the name of the place Hormah ; i. e. Israel called the
place so in token, that, if ever it should be in their power,
they designed to make it desolate'. As to what is added in
the third verse, that the Lord hearkened unto the voice of Israel,
and delivered up the Canaanites, and that they utterly destroyed
them and their cities : the thing was not done, and therefore
the remark could not be made in the days of Moses. The
words perhaps might be written, by way of observation, in
the margin of some ancient MS. of the Pentateuch, after the
Israelites had destroyed the Canaanites ; copiers from such a
MS. might afterwards transcribe it from the margin into the
text, and thereby occasion it to come down to us as part
of it.

The king of Edom refusing to admit the Israelites to pass
through his country, and the king of Arad opposing them
upon the frontiers of his kingdom, they were obliged to re-
tire back into the wilderness, and therefore decamped from
mount Hor. They were ordered to march towards the Red

e Josh xii 14. h Judges i. 17.

f Judges i. 17. i The word Hormah signifies a place

K Josh. xii. 14. devoted to destruction.

VOL. II. O

196 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

sea, and to fetch a compass round about the land of Edom k .
They began this expedition, but the soul of the people was
much discouraged because of the way l : they remonstrated
to Moses all the difficulties that would attend it ; complained
that they should be distressed for want of water, and that, as
to the manna, they loathed it m , and therefore were not
willing to go again through a desert, where they could ex-
pect no other provision. They began hereupon to be too
mutinous for Moses to lead them any further, had not God
been pleased to correct them for their obstinacy, by sending
amongst them fiery serpents, which destroyed many of
them". This calamity soon humbled them, and upon their
intreating Moses, he prayed for them, and obtained them a
cure of the malady that afflicted them. God directed him
to make a serpent, and to set it up in the camp, and promised,
that whoever would look upon it should, though bitten
with a fiery serpent, recover and live . Moses made a serpent
of brass, as he was commanded, and the people found it a
remedy against the calamity that had destroyed great num-
bers of them P.

Sir John Marsham is very particular in his remarks upon
the setting up the brazen serpent ^ : he has collected several
passages from the profane writers, which hint at charms and
inchantments to cure the bite of serpents ; and he says, the
Hebrews made use of inchantments for this very purpose;
which assertion he endeavours to support by a citation from
the Psalms, by another from Ecclesiastes, and by a third
from Jeremiah; and from the whole of what he offers he
would intimate, that the cure of the Israelites here, that
were bitten, was not miraculous; but that the brazen ser-
pent venenum extinguebat et morsus arte Zevabat, was a

charm for the calamity 1 ", or an amulet for the distemper 8 ,
a\f^rjTrjpLov rrjs roo-avrrjs TrArjyrJs. It would be trifling to en-
deavour to refute this opinion : no one acquainted with

k Numbers xxi. 4 P Ver. 9.

1 Ibid. Q Can. Chron. p. 142.

mVer. 5. r Id. p. 144.

n Ver. 6. s ibid.

o Yer. 8.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 197

sir John Marsham's way of thinking can imagine he be-
lieved it : I dare say he thought a charm for the biting of a
serpent as ridiculous on the one hand, as the opinion of some
learned commentators is on the other ; who, in order to make
the miracle appear the greater, contend that brass is of a
virulent nature, and that the looking upon a serpent made of
that metal would by way of sympathy add rancour to the
wounds, instead of curing them*. To a reasonable inquirer
the brazen serpent cannot appear to have been, of itself, of
any effect at all : this unquestionably was sir John Marsham's
opinion ; and what he cites from the heathen writers was in-
tended by him to prove, not that charms had ever been a
real cure for the bitings of serpents, but that the world had
been amused with such fancies : and he cites the sacred
writers in order to hint, that they admitted and counte-
nanced these popular superstitions ; and his real thoughts
about Moses and the Israelites in the case before us appear
to me to have been, that the bitings of the serpents which
the Israelites were infested with were not mortal; that
Moses set up the brazen serpent to amuse the people, that
those who were bitten might make themselves easy by look-
ing at it, in hopes of a cure, until the poison spent itself, and
the inflammation ceased; that when they grew well, Moses
might teach them to ascribe their cure to a secret efficacy of
the brazen serpent, in order to raise and support his credit
amongst them. This must be our learned writer's sentiment,
in its full strength and latitude ; and to this I answer,

I. There were indeed serpents of divers sorts in many
parts of the world, and some not so venomous but that their
bite was curable. Diodorus Siculus informs us, that in the
island Taprobane, now called Ceylon, there were serpents of
a large kind, of no noxious quality"; and Herodotus men-
tions a lesser sort as free from venom in the parts near Thebes
in Egypt x . The inhabitants of Epidaurus in Greece were
well acquainted with these sorts of serpents y, and such
abounded in Ethiopia 7 -. Pausanias was of opinion that the

* Vid. Pol. Synops. Crit. in loc. c. 109.

11 Diodor. Sic. lib. ii. c. 59. y Pausan. in Corinthiac. c. 28.

x Herodot. lib. ii. c. 74. Id. lib. iii. z Herodot. lib. iv. c. 183.

198 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

same sort of serpents would not be equally venomous in
different countries; for that a different pasture may add to
or diminish the virulence of their poison 3 : and thus it may
be true in fact, that there anciently were, and now are in the
world, many sorts of serpents not thought capable of biting
mortally, but that a little time and patience, without much
help of medicine, might heal the wounds received from
them. And we may imagine, that the nature of the more
noxious sorts might be mitigated by removing them into a
climate, or managing them with diet not apt to supply them
with a too potent poison b : and physic and surgery are now
brought to such perfection, that perhaps there is no poison
of serpents so deadly, but that, if application be made in due
time, a sufficient remedy may be had for it. But though we
allow all this, let us observe,

II. That as Moses represents the serpents which bit the
Israelites to have caused a great mortality ; so the heathen
writers concur in testifying that the deserts, wherein the
Israelites journeyed, produced serpents of so venomous a
kind, that their biting was deadly, beyond the power of any
art then known to cure it. The ancients observed in the
general, that the most barren and sandy deserts had the great-
est number and most venomous of serpents. Diodorus makes
this remark more particularly of the sands in Africa d ; but it
was equally true of the wilderness wherein the Israelites
journeyed: serpents and scorpions were here, according to
Moses, as natural as drought and want of water 6 ; and
Strabo's observation agrees with Moses f , and both Strabo
and Diodorus concur that the serpents that were so numerous
here were of the most deadly kind, and that there was no
cure for their biting &. Some writers have imagined the ser-
pents which bit the Israelites to have been of the flying
kind : Herodotus informs us, that Arabia produced this
sort h ; and the time of year in which the Israelites were under
this calamity was in the season in which these serpents

a Pausan. in Boeotic. c. 28. f iro\v rb TUV epirer&v ev avrais

b Diodor. lib. iii. c. 37. ir^Bos. Strab. Geog. 1. xvi. p. 759.
c Numb. xxi. 6. g Strab. 1. xvi. Diodor. 1. iii.

rt Diodor. lib. iii. c. 50. h Herodot. 1. iii. c. 109.

e Deut. viii. 15.

AND PROFANE HISTORY

199

are upon the wing 1 , and visit the neighbouring and adjacent
countries ; so that these might at this time fly into the camp
of the Israelites in great numbers. But Moses does not hint
them to have been flying serpents ; he calls them ha nechashim
haserapim* : had he meant flying serpents, he would have
said, nachashim serapim menopepim ; for they are so described
where they are mentioned in the Scriptures 1 . Strabo has
taken notice of a kind of serpents produced in or near the
parts where the Israelites journeyed, which might be called
fiery from their colour" 1 ; and both he and Diodorus were of
opinion that the bitings of these were incurable"; and of
this sort probably were those which assaulted the Israelites.
But whether we can fix this point is not very material ; it is
enough for our purpose, that from what has been offered it
may be observed, that after all the knowledge which the
heathens had of cures and inchantments for the bitings of
serpents, yet they would not have judged any of their arts
sufficient to have recovered the Israelites, whose malady was
occasioned by a sort of serpents against whose venom they
had no remedy. But,

III. Let us see what charms the heathens pretended to
have to cure the bitings of serpents. The profane writers do
indeed celebrate the Marsi, a people in Italy , the Psylli in
Africa?, and the Ophiogenes in lesser Asia^, as very eminent
for their abilities against the poison of serpents ; and they
give us many wonderful stories of each of them. But we
may remark upon their performances, as Strabo does upon
Alexander's curing the wounds of Ptolemy r ; and it will ap-
pear that the persons of whom we have such marvellous
accounts were perhaps possessed of some physical recipes

A.6yos Se eVrt a/u.o T<? eapt Trrepoarovs
pafiiris ireVeortfcu. Herodot.
1. ii. c. 75.

k Numb. xxi. 6.
1 See Isaiah xxx. 6.
m "Octets (poiviKol T
Geog. 1. xvi. p. 778.

n Tb 5f)7/xo UXOVTCS
ibid. Diodorus says,

Aws aviara. Hist. 1.

Strab.

. Strab.
iroiovvrat
47. Eud.

o Virg. ^En. vii. 750. Plin. Nat, Hist.
1. vii. c. 2.

. c.

P Plin. ibid. Pausan. in Boeotic. c.
28. Strab. Geog. 1. xiii. p. 588. ed.
Par. 1 628.

q Ibid. Plin. ubi sup.

r Tpudevra Se IlToAejuaibj/ KivSv-

veveiv eV virvtp Se irapa.ffra.vTa Tiva r<f

e?|ot pifav /cal "Xfh-

i86vras Se rovs ISapfidpovs
*vpT)fji4vov rb aAe'l^a, UTTTJK^OUS yevfcrdai
i, EIK^S Se nva fj.rjvva'ai TWV
& Se /j.v6caSfs irpo(TeTdr] Ko\a-
xtlas x<*-f> iv ' Strab. 1. xv. p. 723.

200 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

for the venom of serpents, and that the mythologists, as was
their usual way, invented fables to raise their fame, instead
of recording their skill in a true narration. It is remarkable,
that the persons above mentioned are acknowledged by those
who speak most fabulously of their art, to have used external
and medicinal applications. The Psylli began the cure
by anointing the wound with their spittle 5 ; and this was
thought no mean medicine both by Varro and Pliny 1 ; and
it might have more effect than we may be apt to think of,
if the artists that applied it had prepared their mouths by
chewing such herbs as they thought proper to use upon the
occasion. If this application did not answer, then they en-
deavoured to suck out the poison u . It may be said, these
were but poor attempts for the cure of so dangerous a
malady. I answer ; the knowledge and use of physic was not
carried to a great perfection in these ages. Pliny has given
us above an hundred different remedies for the venom of ser-
pents 31 : most, perhaps all of them, would be now thought
to be but trifling prescriptions, and yet probably twenty of
the meanest of them would have raised any person to the
reputation of an extraordinary magician in the days of the
Marsi, Psylli, and Ophiogenes. Pausanias had no very high
opinion of the powers of the Psylli ; for he seems to doubt
whether they could cure the bite of a serpent, unless the ser-
pent before its biting had accidentally eat some food which
might abate its venom y. However, these men had their medi-
cines, which sometimes proved successful; and their skill,
though it would not have gained them the title of good sur-
geons in an age of more experience, was enough, in the times
they lived in, to convey them down to the fabulous writers as
more than mortal : and these writers, fond of the marvellous,
were apt to omit relating every thing in their practice which
did not appear surprising, and to give us that part only which
might look like magic and inchantment. The philosophy of
these times led those who thought themselves most rational

s Lucan. Pharsal. 1. ix. 925, the wound, which a Saracen had given

t Plin. Nat, Hist. 1. vii. c. 2. to Edward the First with a poisoned

u Lucan. ubi sup. We are told by knife.

some of our English historians, that x Plin. Nat. Hist, in var. loc.

queen Eleanor sucked the poison out of y Pausan. in Boeotic. c. 28.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 201

into many superstitions z ; and the practitioners of medicine
thought it necessary to use some rites to gain a favourable
influence of the planetary powers upon their endeavours,
and to put the mind of the patient into an harmonious tem-
per for their operations having success upon him. And
hence music was thought to have its use at the time of their
giving medicine, and sometimes proper words were mut-
tered a ; for words duly compounded were thought to have
great power b to charm the elements to favour the cure:
and what they did of this sort appearing more prodigious
than their applications of the juices of herbs and other me-
dicaments, the fabulous writers omit to speak of the latter,
but mention at large their other performances, and lay great
stress upon them. Thus the Indians were said to have iti-
nerant inchanters, who were thought to cure the bitings of
serpents by their singing : but Strabo remarks, that what
they did was almost the only practice of physic in use in In-
dia in their days d ; so that I should imagine they used me-
dicines as well as music. Upon the whole ; all the accounts
we have of the heathen cures of the malady we are treating
of, carry, if duly considered, the appearance of as much me-
dicinal art as these ages were acquainted with ; and they
have no further show of magic and incantation, than what
the philosophy of these times, and the religion built upon
such philosophy, taught the learned to think necessary to
give medicine its due and natural effect upon the human
body: and whoever will judiciously consider the whole of
what the profane writers offer upon this topic may abun-
dantly see, that none of the heathen magicians would have
admitted that a brazen serpent set up, as Moses set up that
in the wilderness, couldpossibly have had any effect towards
curing the people.

But, IV. Let us consider whether the texts of Scripture
cited by sir John Marsham do indeed support the point for

z See vol. ii. b. ix. c 'EirwSovs irfpifyona

a - Par lingua potentibus hcrbis. iaffdai. Strab. Geog. 1. xv. p. 706.
Plurima turn volvit spumanti car- d Kal ftvai crxeSoV n ^6vi\v ja.\)Tt\v

mina lingua. larpiKr)v. Id. ibid.
b See vol. ii. b. ix.

202 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XIT.

which he cites them. He remarks, that David mentions
the deaf adder, that stoppeth her ear, which will not hearken to
the voice of the charmers, charming never so wisely* ; and that
Solomon hints at a serpent that would bite without inchant-
ment { ,- and that Jeremiah speaks of cockatrices and serpents
which will not be charmed?*; and from hence he insinuates,
that the sacred writers were sensible that charms were a suf-
ficient cure for the bitings of some serpents ; though there
were others, whose poison was not to be controlled by the
influence of them. I answer ; two of these texts, if duly ex-
amined, are very foreign to sir John Marsham's purpose ;
for there is nothing of charming or inchantment suggested in
them. The words of David, Psalm Iviii. truly translated,
are ; As 11 the deaf adder will stop her ear, which will not at-
tend to the voice of the eloquent' 1 , putting together the sayings* of
the wise. David had no thought of charms or inchantments,
but in a noble expression represents wicked men to be deaf to
the best instructions offered to them in the most engaging
manner. We have an English proverb, which in some measure
expresses the import of David's words, though not with such
a dignity of diction : when good advice is given, but not at-
tended to, we compare it to a song sung to an horse. An horse
or an adder are not to be moved by the wisest intimations :
wicked and dissolute men are, morally speaking, like these

e Psalm Iviii. 4, 5. f Ecclesiastes x. 8. S Jer. viii. 17.

h The Hebrew text is in these words :

13 12 it 10 987654321

oann n'-ian *mn n^ran^n ^ip 1 ? yos^'M 1 ? -ITDM IDTN o^N 11 imn jnonos
i.e.

1234 5 678 9 10

Sicut aspis surda obturabit aurem suam, quse non auscultabit voci eloquentium

ii 12 13

connectenti connexiones sapientis.

i The word ttmb may sometimes Prudent in giving counsel, says Jona-
be used to mutter, as inchanters did. than in his Targum, and so it is ren-
It is a word not often used in Scrip- dered in the Syriac version. And thus
ture ; but it has not always this magic I take the word in the passage before
meaning: in 2 Sam. xii. 19. it signi- us to signify those who offer what
fies to whisper, without any reference they have to say in the best, softest,
to sorcery or inchantment. In Isaiah and most engaging manner,
iii. 3. \unb (122 is translated the elo- k nnnn. Connexiones, in Quin-
quent orator. Eloquii peritum in the tilian's sense of the word: the conclu-
interlinear translation of the Hebrew, sions of the wise.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 203

animals ; the best things that can be said to them are lost
upon them; and this is what David very elegantly repre-
sents, without any view or hint of the possibility of charm-
ing any serpent whatsoever. In like manner, nothing can
be concluded to sir John Marsham's purpose from the words
of the Preacher. We translate the verse, Surely a serpent
will bite without inchantment, and a babbler is no better : but
the Hebrew words truly rendered would be thus ; A serpent
will bite without any warning ', and a babbler [or one that
loves to prate] is no better^. The word lachash is here used
as in 2 Samuel xii. 19. and the expression be loa lachash is
without a whisper, i. e. without the least noise or intimation ;
in silentio, says the vulgar Latin ; the LXX. zv ov ^t^upto-juw,
without a whisper', the Targum, in taciturnitate, silently.
The sacred writer hints beautifully, that a prater wounds
you before you can be aware of him ; and we entirely lose
his sentiment if we take the verse to hint what sir John
Marsham would infer from it. The last text cited by our
learned author is Jeremiah viii. 17. The prophet threatens
the Israelites with serpents, cockatrices, which will not be
charmed. It is evident to any one that considers the con-
text, that the prophet here uses an allegory, and does not
mean that the Israelites should be infested with serpents ;
but that God would bring upon them the armies of their
enemies, and calamities against which they should find no
remedy. However, since the allegory may be said to be
founded upon the sentiment of the speaker, and the prophet,
from his using the expression of serpents that will not be
charmed, to signify irremediable calamities, may be argued
to have thought some serpents capable of being charmed, as
some calamities may have a cure, I would enter a little more
exactly into his sentiment and expression ; and in order
hereto let us observe, i. That the Hebrews applied to no
physicians in the most early times ; but, when under any ma-

9 8 7 6 S43 21
1 The Hebrew words are, pttj^n ^ya 1 ? p"\iv ]'Nl sm? Nlbl ttmsn "yttV n

12 334S 6 7 8 9

i. e. Si mordeat serpens sine susurro : et non prsestantia adamantis linguam, or
non melior est, qui adamat loqui.

204 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

lady m , they sought unto God for a cure. 2. There was
an art of physic known both to Jews and heathens before
the days of Jeremiah". 3. The heathens had introduced
into their practice of it such rites as their learning and re-
ligion dictated, and these rites were the charms, magic, and
incantation they made use of : they were charms of no real
influence, nor truly productive of any supernatural effect ;
but they were thought significant by the learned of these
ages, who built upon the rudiments of a vain and mistaken
philosophy. 4. The Jews were not so careful to adhere
strictly to the true God and to his religion, but that in
many things they frequently admitted the practice of the
heathen superstitions, and learned their ways ; and as Asa
when sick, almost 300 years before the days of Jeremiah,
sinned in this manner, by applying to the physicians?; so
very probably in the prophet's days much of the heathen
physic might, in the corrupted state they were then in, be
admitted and admired amongst them. But this is not all :
in the days of Jeremiah, the Jews were greatly corrupted in
both their religion and politics ; they had departed far from
Godq ; walked after vanity, and were become vain r ; set up
idols as numerous as their cities s . They had changed their
glory for that which could not profit them* ; turned their lack
upon God u , turned incense unto Baal x ; kneaded their dough
to make cakes unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-
offerings unto other gods y : and now distress was coming
upon them, and a dread and fear of being ruined, sometimes
from the armies of the kings of Assyria, at other times from
the invasions of the kings of Egypt, they thought to be
preserved under the protection of their false gods by a vain
policy in confederating with one or other of these powers,
as circumstances might require, in order to be supported by
one or the other of them. And to this end, before Jeremiah

m See vol. ii. b. ix. r Jer. ii. 5.

n See 2 Chron. xvi. 12. s Ver. 28.

o This their method for the cure of t Ver. 11.

the bitings of serpents abundantly sug- u Ver. 27.

gests to us. * Ch. vii. 9.

P 2 Chron. xvi. 12. y Ver. 18.

<1 Jer. ii. 5.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 205

applied to them, they had made a league with the king of
Assyria, and they had suffered by it, and been ashamed of
it z . At the time of his address to them, they were in alli-
ance with Egypt a ; but of this the prophet tells them they
would in a little time be ashamed also b ; for that God had
rejected their confidences, and that they should not prosper in
them c . The design of Jeremiah was to set before the Jews,
that in the Lord their God was the only true salvation of Is-
rael d ; that from all other helps they hoped for it but in
vain; that destruction upon destruction would come upon
them 6 ; a nation from far be brought against them f ; and
that if they did not amend their ways and their doings s,
turn from their wickednesses and idolatries, they should
find that they put their trust in lying words, that could not
profit h , and that the evils that were coming upon them
would be as serpents, cockatrices, which could not be charmed :
i. e. would be calamities really fatal, not to be remedied by
the trifling and insignificant amusements on which they so
much depended. This is the argument and reasoning of
the prophet; and, if duly attended to, it is so far from as-
scribing any true efficacy to charms and inchantments, that
it strongly intimates them to be a doctrine of vanities'*. Jere-
miah compares charms and inchantments, and the false con-
fidences of the Israelites, to each other, and thereby de-
clares his opinion of both to be, that they were insignificant
and vain. In cases of no certain danger, those who were to
be deceived with vain and imaginary expectations might
amuse themselves, and think they received benefit from
them ; but where the evil was real, and truly wanted a re-
dress, there they would be found not able to profit, there no
help was to be had from them.

I have now considered to the bottom what sir John Mar-
sham intimates concerning the brazen serpent, and should
hope it must be evident that there are no foundations for

z Jer. ii. 36. See Prideaux, Connect. e j e r. iv. 20.

vol. i. b. i. fCh. v. 15.

a Id. ibid. K Ch. vii. 3 15.

b Jer. ii. 36. h Ch. vii. 8.

Ver. 37. i Ch. x. 8.
iii. 2:?.

206 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

his suggestions ; but that every sober querist must see reason
to consider both the calamity that was inflicted upon the Is-
raelites, and the miraculous cure of it, in the light in which
the author of the Book of Wisdom long ago set it ; They
[i. e. the Israelites] were troubled, says \\e,for a small season,
that they might be admonished, having a sign of salvation, to
put them in remembrance of the commandment of thy law. For
he that turned himself towards it was not saved by the thing
that he saw, but by thee, that art the Saviour of all^. The
Israelites were unmindful of the obedience they owed to
God, unwilling to march where God directed them : here-
upon they were punished, to bring them to a better mind,
and their punishment was in a little time removed in a mi-
raculous manner: they were commanded to come and look
up to a brazen serpent ; a thing evidently of itself of no im-
portance, but by God^s power and good pleasure made so
effectual to their recovery, as abundantly to remind them,
that whatever God should think fit to command them, was
importantly necessary to be performed by them.

Moses omits in the 2ist chapter of Numbers two incamp-
ments of the Israelites ; one at Zalmonah, the other at Pu-
non : they are both mentioned in chapter xxxiii. The
brazen serpent was set up at Punon; for after they were
cured, they moved forwards to Oboth 1 , and thence to Ijea-
barim, on the border of the land of Moab m . They were
warned not to attack the Moabites, and therefore did not
enter their country, but marched forward on their borders
into the valley of Zared, and pitched there at a place which
they called Dibon-Gad n . From hence they marched to the
river Arnon, which parts the land of Moab from the country
of the Amorites : they passed over this river, and pitched
in the wilderness of the Amorites at AlmondiblathaimP :
from hence they removed to the mountains of Abarim be-
fore Nebo<*. They made five several incampments here ;
one at Beer, where they digged a well 1 ", another at Matta-

k Wisdom xvi. 6, 7. Ch. xxi. 13.

1 Numb. xxi. 10. P Ibid, et xxxiii. 46.

m Numb. xxi. 1 1. xxxiii. 44. <1 Ver. 47.

n Deut. ii. 9. Numb. xxi. 12. xxxiii. r Ch. xxi. 16.

45-

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 207

nah s , a third at Nahaliel fc , a fourth at Bamoth u , and the
last at Pisgah x . These were the several incampments from
Kadesh to Pisgah; and by fixing them thus, we may per-
fectly reconcile the seeming difference between the 2ist
chapter of Numbers, ver. 11 13, 18 20, and the 33d
chapter, ver. 44 47.

From the camp at Pisgah, Moses sent to Sihon, king of
the Amorites, to ask leave to pass through his country ^ :
but Sihon was so far from being willing to permit them to
march farther into his kingdom, that he determined to ob-
lige them entirely to quit it: he therefore summoned toge-
ther his forces, met the Israelites at Jahaz 2 , and gave them
battle, but was routed by them a : the Israelites pursued
their victory, and forced Sihon out of all that country, from
the river Arnon unto Jabbok b . This tract of land had for-
merly been the Moabites", until Sihon conquered it c ; now
the Israelites came into possession of it. The several victo-
ries which the Israelites obtained in the land of the Amo-
rites d were gotten by detachments from their main body;
for the camp continued at Pisgah, until they removed to the
plains of Moab e : but they sent out select companies, such
as they afterwards chose to fight the Midianites f ; for the
whole camp was too great to move after every expedition :
and by these they reduced this whole country; and after
this they conquered and took possession of the kingdom of
BashanS, and then Moses removed the whole camp, and
pitched in the plains of Moab, near the banks of Jordan,
over-against Jericho h . So large a body as the camp of the
Israelites took up a considerable tract of the country, and
reached from Beth-jesimoth unto Abel-shittim'.

Balak, the son of Zippor, was king of Moab at this time :
he was much alarmed at the march of the Israelites, and his
people had great fears upon account of them k . For this

s Numb. xxi. 18. c Ver. 2629.

t Ver. 19. d Ver. 25.

u ibid. e Ch. xxii. i. xxxiii. 43.

x Ver. 20. f Ch. xxxi. 3, 4, &c.

Y Ver. 21. % Ch. xxi. 33 35.

z Ver. 23. h Ch. xxii. i. xxxiii. 49.

a Ver. 24. i Ibid.

b ibid. k Ch. xxii. 24.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK Xlt.

reason he sent an embassy to the elders of Midian, and re-
presented the common danger they were all in, and agreed
with them to send to Balaam, the son of Beor, a prophet,
whose fame probably had been much talked of, to know if
he could so curse this people as that they might attack and
destroy them 1 . Balaam's country was far distant from the
land of Moab ; he came from the most eastern parts of
Syria ; he lived at Pethor n near the Euphrates; for he was
of Mesopotamia . The ambassadors of the king of Moab,
together with the elders of Midian, came hither to him, and
delivered their message : Balaam required them to stay all
night, until he should inquire of God what answer to give
them : in the morning he acquainted them that God would
not give him leave to go with them P. Upon the ambassadors'
reporting this to Balak, he thought he had not made the
prophet sufficient offers to induce him to take so long a
journey, and therefore sent again by persons of higher rank,
and offered him any advancement in his kingdom 9 : but the
prophet answered, that no temptation should prevail upon
him to do any thing but what God directed ; and therefore
he required them to stay all night, until he should again
consult God, and know what answer to give them r . Upon
this his second inquiry, God gave him leave to go, if the
men came in the morning to call him 8 ; but strictly charged
him if he went, to say nothing but what he should direct *.
The offers of Balak had made impression upon Balaam, and
he grew fond of the journey and of the prospects of it;
and in the morning he stayed not to be called, but got up
early, and saddled his ass u , and went with the princes of
Moab. This was his fault; the wages that were offered
tempted him x , and he was greedy after the re ward ?: he did
not preserve a due indifference to the journey, but pressed

1 Numb. xxii. 4 6. Deut. xxiii. 4.

m He came from Aram out of the P Numb. xxii. 7 13.

mountains of the east, Numb, xxiii. 7. <1 Ver. 14 17.

Aram is Syria. See vol. i. b. iii. r Ver. 18, 19.

n Numb. xxii. 5. The river Eu- s Ver. 20.

phrates might be called the river of his * Ibid,

land : Mesopotamia from this and the Ver. 2 1 .

river Tigris is denominated Aram Na- x 2 Pet. ii. 15.

haraim. See vol. i. b. iii. z Jude, ver. 1 1.

ANL> PROFANE HISTORY. 209

into it with a covetous or ambitious heart : and God's anger
was kindled at his going in this manner 2 . The commenta-
tors do not, I think, clearly determine what Balaam's fault
was ; and our modern deists, with great assurance, ridicule
the fact here related: they remark, that his going upon
Balak's second message was by God's express command,
and yet that the text says, God's anger was kindled because
he went*. I answer : Our translators do indeed thus render
the text ; but the Hebrew words are clear of this absurdity.
The Hebrew text is, And the anger of God was kindled,
not p-J^n *5] ci halak, because he went, but [b^H "[^H *O]
ci halak hua b , because he went of himself c , i. e. without stay-
ing for Balak's messengers to come in the morning to call
him. He had no leave to go at all, unless the messengers
came in the morning again to him d ; and perhaps if he had
not thus gone to them, after having promised them an
answer, they might have thought their master's great offers
neglected, and have gone away without him. But his head
and heart were too full of expectations from the journey, to
run the hazard of not being further invited into it, and so
he rose early in the morning, and went to them, directly
contrary to God's express order 6 , and was opposed by the
angel for this breach of his duty f . What follows in Moses's
narration has appeared to many writers .a great difficulty.
Philo seems not to have thought that Balaam's ass did really
speak to him ; for he gives a large account of all Balaam's
proceedings, but is absolutely silent as to this particulars.
The Jewish Rabbins represent Balaam to have heard and
answered to what the ass is related to have said to him in a
trance or vision h , and our modern rationalists are very free
in their remarks upon the fact as related by Moses. But,
i. An inspired writer in the New Testament assures us,
that it was real fact as Moses relates it. Moses says, that

z Numb. xxii. 22. e Ibid, and ver. 21.

a Ibid. f Ver. 22, 32.

b Our Hebrew Bibles have the place, 8 Philo Jud. de vit. Mosis, lib. i. p.

Nin *]bin-3 : but the Samaritan text 643. ed. Turn. Par. 1640.

is, I think, more accurate. h Maimonid. More Nevoch. p. ii.

c See book xi. c. 42.

d Numb. xxii. 20.

210 CONNECTION OF THE SACEED [BOOK XII.

the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Ba-
laam 1 : and St. Peter tells us, that the dumb ass, speaking with
man's voice, forbad the madness of the prophet*. 2. It is a
fact in no wise impossible : some writers represent, that the
very nature of the ass must have been changed, to make her
capable of what is related. They argue, that not only a
power of speaking must have been given to her, but that
her mind must have been enlarged also, to enable her, first,
to know an angel when she saw one, and in the next place
to recollect backward how she had carried her master until
that time, and to remonstrate this, so as to suggest to him,
that if something extraordinary had not happened she had
undoubtedly still carried him in the same manner 1 . The
brute creatures are not conceived to have these powers of
reasoning : they do not pursue, connect, and compare their
ideas in this regular manner. Had Balaam's ass not been
endued with a greater compass of reason than creatures of
this species ordinarily have, she would not have spoken what
Moses relates, even though the power of speech had been
miraculously given to her : she might have represented, that
she was affrighted, but she would not have connected and
compared her former services with her present miscarriage.
But to this I answer ; Moses does not say that the ass knew
an angel : an angel appeared to her in the way with a
drawn sword to oppose their passage; she endeavoured to
avoid him when she could, and when she could not, she
fell down. She might have done the same, if a man had
opposed them in the same manner : or the appearance of the
angel might very much affright her, without her knowing
it to be an angel. As to her reasoning above the capacity
of a brute animal, and speaking the result of such reasoning ;
God undoubtedly could, if he had pleased, have instantly
capacitated any of the inferior creatures for this, or for
much greater things. But even this does not appear to
have been done. An human voice came out of the mouth
of the ass m ; but I do not apprehend that what the voice

i Numb. xxii. 28. * Numb. xxii. 28, 29, 30.

* 2 Pet. ii. 1 6. m 2 Pet. ii. 16.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

uttered proceeded from her sentiments ; rather it was what
God would have to be uttered to rebuke the prophet : the
tongue of the ass was miraculously moved, not by any na-
tural power of hers so to move it, and it spake what it was
moved to utter, without any connection of the words spoken
with the sentiments of the ass, and without her under-
standing the words which she uttered upon this occasion.
This seems to me to have been the fact, and herein there is a
real miracle ; but no appearance of the absurdity that is
pretended. I would consider, 3. that the miracle of the
ass's speaking was not superfluous and unnecessary, but
very pertinent and suitable to the design which God intended
to promote by it. It is imagined by some, that this miracle
might well have been spared; that the angel's appearing
was abundantly sufficient to have recalled Balaam to his
duty; that he was not much moved by the ass's speaking",
it was the seeing the angel that affected him : and, they
say, why should God cause so unusual a miracle, as a dumb
creature's speaking, to so little purpose, and so little
wanted ? I answer ; Balaam was perhaps much surprised
at the ass's speaking, though Moses has not reported it to
us : the ancient Jewish writers imagined he was so, and
accordingly Josephus represents him to have been greatly
astonished at it p . But Moses's narration is short and con-
cise ; and he may have omitted this and other particulars
of Balaam's story that were not of great moment to be told
by him : for, what if the heat and obstinate bent of Balaam's
temper caused him not to pay a due regard to this miracle,
shall the miracle be therefore argued to be in itself insigni-
ficant, because he did not suffer it to have its due effect
upon him ? Many miracles were wrought in Egypt, which
Pharaoh paid little regard to ; but we cannot censure them
as extravagant or superfluous, because Pharaoh did not
apply his heart duly to consider themq : they might any one
of them have been of great service to him, if he would
have made them so ; and that justifies the wisdom and good-

n Numb. xxii. 29. o Ver. 34. P Joseph. Antiq. lib. iv. c. 3. <l Exodus vii. 23.
VOL. II. p

21 2 CONNECTION OF THE SACKED [BOOK Xll.

ness of God in causing them to be wrought before him.
And this may be remarked in the case of Balaam : God did
not design to permit a war between the Israelites and
Moabites at this time : he had warned the Israelites not to
distress or war against them r , and he would not suffer
Balaam to curse the Israelites, because the Moabites would
have paid so great a regard to what he had promised, that
they would thereupon have attacked them, in hopes of
being able to overcome and drive them out* of the neighbour-
ing country. God could indeed, if he had pleased, have
overruled Balaam's heart, and disposed him for his duty,
without the appearance of any miracle, or have caused any
one miracle to have been as effectual as ten thousand : but
he dealt with Balaam as with a free agent : he did not take
away his liberty, but set before him very considerable mo-
tives to induce him to make a right and virtuous use of it.
If we consider the whole process of this affair, we shall not
see reason to judge any part of what God was here pleased
to do to be superfluous or extravagant, but must allow, that,
in every particular, God was exceedingly merciful unto
Balaam, though the corruption of his heart was very great.
When he was first sent for by Balak, and inquired whether
he should go, God did not direct him into a temptation too
hard for him 1 : upon the second inquiry, a way was still
made for him to escape^; for had he not gone until he had
been called in the morning x , probably Balak 's high and
more honourable messengers J would not have been so at-
tendant upon what they might have thought his humour,
but would have gone away without him. But he would
go, and he went with a corrupt heart, not likely to be duly
mindful of the charge which God had given him 2 ; but
liable to be tempted to gratify the king, in order to obtain
the advancement that was offered him a . And here God was

r Deut. ii. 9. z Balaam's heart was known unto

s Numb. xxii. 1 1 . God, and he intended not to be strictly

t Ver. 12. careful to speak only what God should

u Ver. 20. direct, and therefore this point was

x Ver. 21. given again in charge to him, ver. 35.

y Ver. 15. a Numb. xxii. 17.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

pleased to correct his intention by two miracles : by the
one of which he evidenced to him, that he could so control
him, that it should not really be in his power to falsify, if he
would, what God had designed to direct him to say. By
the other he threatened him not to attempt it upon pain of
death. The ass he rode on was made to speak to him ; a
convincing demonstration, that it would be a vain thing in
him to endeavour to speak otherwise than God should order
him ; since the same power, that here caused even a dumb
animal to move its tongue very differently from what it
was naturally capable of, could certainly overrule even his
tongue, and make him say just what, and no more than what
was dictated to him, whether he was willing or designed
to speak it or no. Some writers, Philo in particular 11 , and
Josephus c , represent Balaam as actually overruled in the
use of his tongue, when he blessed the Israelites, and that
he would have cursed instead of blessing them, if he could
have made his tongue speak what he designed. But I see
no reason to go into this opinion : God abundantly ap-
prised Balaam by the miracle of the ass^s speaking, that he
could thus overrule him if he pleased ; but I believe he
still left him the liberty of a free agent, after having assured
him by the angel, that, if he abused his liberty in this par-
ticular, he would destroy him: and, I think, both these
miracles appear to have affected the prophet. He seemed
after this to bear in mind a due sense of his inability to
speak otherwise than God should permit him d ; and though
he used endeavours, and had it at heart, if he could any
ways do it, to gratify Balak 6 , yet at last he did not dare to
venture, but told the king without reserve, all that God,
and nothing but what God had been pleased to reveal to
him f . But, 4.' though the miracle of the ass's speaking
was not superfluous and insignificant to Balaam; yet if it
had not been a real fact, Moses could have no inducement
to relate it : he could have no purpose to serve by it : the

b Phil. Jud. lib. i. de vit. Mosis, p. d Numb. xxii. 38. xxiii. 26.
645, &c. ed. Turn. Par. 1640. e Ch. xxiii. 23. xxiv. i.

c Joseph. Antiq. lib. iv. c. 6. f Ch. xxiii. 3 9. 17 24.

214 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

Israelites would have appeared under the especial protection
of God's providence as well without it : and Moses, as a
wise and prudent man, if he had had no other restraint, would
not have invented such an unheard of and needless prodigy ;
for it would have been to no purpose if it had been his in-
vention, because he could have no scheme or end to serve
by it.

Balaam's behaviour after he came to Balak ; how he en-
deavoured to find enchantments to curse the Israelites, but
could not succeed in them ; and therefore, instead of cursing
them, blessed them three times, and gave thereby great
offence to Balak; what he prophesied to Balak, and how
Balak dismissed him, are points related at large in the 23d
and 24th chapters of Numbers : and, I may add, what may
be remarked upon them, if 1 inquire who Balaam was, and
what character we ought to give him. I have before men-
tioned where he lived when Balak sent to him : it does not
seem as if he lived there in great circumstances of wealth
and dignity; for if he had been in so easy a situation,
Balak's offers of advancement would not have been so
tempting to him : or, when he could not obtain the ad-
vancement that had been proposed to him, he would have
returned home again, and not have thought it worth his
while to have stayed in Midian. But when Balak dismissed
him, he behaved like a man in little fortunes, and of an
ambitious spirit; was willing to ingratiate himself with the
Midianites, and gave them the most wicked advice to en-
snare the Israelites into ruin, and was found and slain in this
country when the Israelites warred against it h . Pethor in
Mesopotamia was most probably situate near or in Chaldea,
under the government of the kings of Assyria ; and as these
nations had been long infected with idolatry', and were
under a government that established and supported the idola-
trous worship, it is not probable that Balaam, if he was a
prophet of the true God, could have any prospects of ad-
vancement in his own country. The ancestors of Abraham
and his family were expelled this land for worshipping the

e Numb. xxxi. 16. Rev. ii. 14. h Numb. xxxi. 8. i See vol. i. b. v.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

God of heaven k ; and if Balaam pursued the worship of this
true God, whatever reputation he might have as to his
private character, no public advantages in his own country
were likely to accrue to him from it : and this might
make him so desirous to accept an invitation into another
land.

It is disputed by some, whether Balaam was indeed a
prophet and a worshipper of the true God : they imagine
him to be a mere magician or enchanter, one that prophe-
sied by the rules of vaticination in use in these days amongst
the worshippers of false gods. If this opinion be true, then
the revelations that were made to him from the true God
must have been made to him in a manner he had not been
accustomed to, and beyond his expectation, in like manner
as the Egyptian magicians were enabled to work real mi-
racles 1 . But I should think this notion of Balaam is not
consistent with what Moses relates of him. When the
messengers of Balak came first to him, he immediately ap-
plied to God for direction" 1 ; and the God he applied to
was not Baal, nor any of the gods of the idolatrous nations,
but Jehovah 11 ; the true and living God was his God: and
he does not appear to have been at any time surprised at
the answers God was pleased to give him, or at the angel's
appearing to him, or at the word of prophecy put into his
mouth , being well apprised of, and acquainted with, God's
communicating his will to his servants in these several man-
ners. The only dubious appearance in his behaviour is his
having sought for enchantments p . If he was a prophet and
servant of the true God, why should he seek for enchant-
ments? or what service could he think to receive from
them ? I answer ; the arts of magicians, and their enchant-
ments to procure prodigies and oracles, though the vulgar
people did not understand the foundation they were built
on, were to the wise men and philosophers the produce of
learning and natural science, falsely indeed so called, but really

k Josh. xxiv. 2. Judith v. 6, 7, 8. Num. xxii. 9, 10, 12, 20, 31, 34.

l See vol. ii. b. ix. xxiii. 4, 5, 16.

m Numb. xxii. 8. P Ch. xxiv. i,.
n Ver. 8, 13, 1 8, 19, &c.

216 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

esteemed by them to be true q : and, as Moses was learned in
all the learning of the Egyptians 1 , though he did not prac-
tise any of the arts that were the basis and support of false
religion 8 ; so Balaam, though he had hitherto virtuously
adhered to the true God, might, as a learned man, not be
entirely a stranger to the theory of what human science and
the then reputed natural knowledge had advanced upon
these subjects. And as Saul, though he had before put away
those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land 1 ,
was yet induced, when the Lord answered him not, neither by
dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets, to go to a woman that
had a familiar spirit, and inquire of her" ; so Balaam, find-
ing nothing but a full disappointment of all his views, in
the several revelations which God was pleased to make to
him, and being warmly inclined to purchase, if he might
with any colour be able to do it, the advancement which
Balak had offered him, was tempted to try what might be
the event, if he used some of the arts which the most learned
nations held in the highest repute, and esteemed to be of
the greatest efficacy x : he tried, but found no enchantment
against Jacob, nor any divination against Israel?. What par-
ticular arts he used, or upon what rules of science he pro-
ceeded, I cannot say; Moses has not told us. But if his
building seven altars was, as I have supposed, one of his
artifices 2 , it will hint him to have copied after the Egyp-
tian theology. For, as they worshipped at this time the
lights of heaven, so they first imagined the seven days of the
week to be under the respective influences of seven of these
luminaries a . The Chaldeans are thought to have come into
this doctrine next after the Egyptians b ; other nations did
not admit it so early c : Belus the son of Neptune had ob-

Q See vol. ii. b. ix. e^evprjueva- ueis re /cal ri/iep*? e/fao-nj Oeuv

r Acts vii. 22. frreu eo-rt. Herodot. 1. ii. c. 82. Dio

s See vol. ii. b. ix. Cassius dicit, Dispositionem dierum ad

t i Sam. xxviii. 3. vii. planetas inventum fuisse JEgypti-

u Ver. 6, 7. arum. Philastrius Brixiensis eucpresse

x They imagined that oracles and asserit, Hermen definivisse secundum

prodigies might be procured by these vii. stellas hominum generationem con~

arts sine Deo. See vol. ii. b. ix. sistere. Vid. Marsh. Can. Chron. p.

y Numb, xxiii. 23. 448.

z Vol. ii. b. ix. b Clem. Alex. Stromat. 1. i.

a Kai rctSe &\\a Alyvirrioi<ri e<rn c Marsham, ubi sup.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 217

tained leave for himself and some Egyptian priests to make
a settlement at Babylon about half a century before Balak
sent for Balaam 11 . Belus and his followers taught the Chal-
deans their astronomy, and probably introduced this Egyp-
tian notion of the influence of the seven ruling stars, and it
might now be the reigning doctrine in Balaam's time; and
he, not being a stranger to the learning of the age and
country he lived in, might know enough of it to make a
show before Balak of proceeding to his auguries by the
rules of it e . And if the sacrifices of Balak had been attended
with any such circumstances as those, upon inspection of
which the idolatrous prophets formed their divinations, I
question not but Balaam had a disposition to take occasion
to speak from them : but the providence of God seems not
to have permitted him to have a possibility of being mis-
taken : if he would have cursed the Israelites, he must have
done it, and at the same time have had a full sense that they
were blessed, without any room for doubt or suspicion that
it could be otherwise ; and he was not hardy enough to be
guilty of such an abandoned prostitution ; but, upon offering
his third sacrifice, he gave over : he went not, as at other
times, to seek for enchantments *. The place, I think, is not well
rendered : the Hebrew words intimate to us, that he did
not perform the ceremonies in walking or dancing round the
altar, by which the idolaters endeavoured to procure vati-
cinations S; but he set his face towards the wilderness, and

d See vol. ii. b. viii. f Numb. xxiv. i.

e Some critics have imagined, that g One of the heathen rites made use
Balaam built and offered upon seven of to procure success to their sacri-
altars upon account of the states he fices, was their dancing or moving in
offered for, being in number seven, set steps backwards and forwards, from
The Moabites indeed were under one side to side, round about their altars :
head, Balak being their king; but the this the priests of Baal did in order to
Midianites were under elders ; and it procure fire from heaven in the days
is conjectured, that they were divided of Elijah, i Kings xviii. 26. And this
into seven principalities : but this ceremony Balaam seems to have per-
imagination is entirely groundless. formed at each of the preceding sacri-
The kings or heads of Midian were fices ; at his last sacrifice he gave over,
five, not seven, Numb. xxxi. 8. and Our translation of the words would
had the number of Balaam's altars induce one to imagine, that his going
been owing to the number of states he away from Balak to meet or invoke
sacrificed for, he must have built not the Lord, was his going to seek en-
seven, but six only ; five for the states chantments : but the Hebrew text sug-
of Midian, and one for the king of gests no such thing. The Hebrew
Moab. words are,

218 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

lift up his eyes and saw Israel abiding in his tents according
to his tribes ; and the spirit of God came upon him, and he told
Balak, without reserve, all that God was pleased to reveal
to him h . Balak was provoked at what Balaam now deli-
vered to him 5 ; for Balaam spake now in a higher strain than
ever in favour of the Israelites ; but as he had now omitted
some ceremonies, which he had before used to give effect to
his sacrifices, and had not gone aside, as he twice before
had done, to meet or invoke God; Balak could see no
cogent reason for his so speaking. Balaam indeed prefaced
what he delivered with declaring them to be the words
which he heard from God, when he sato the vision of the
Almighty, falling into a trance, but Jiaving his eyes open*.
Certainly no such vision was ever seen by Balaam whilst
Balak was with him, so that this revelation was made to him
when he was alone, probably before he had attended upon
Balak's sacrifices ; and now, upon his giving over all further
thoughts of amusing or gratifying Balak, God inspired him
to recollect and deliver all that had been revealed to him :
and Balak was so offended at his now speaking in so ex-
traordinary a manner in favour of his enemies, because, to
his apprehension, nothing had happened to cause his so
doing. The prophet however proceeded and advertised
him what Israel should do to his people in after-ages 1 .
Balak paid but little regard to what he said, dismissed him
with contempt, apprehending him in no wise to answer
the character that had been given of him m . Hereupon
Balaam left him, and went to the Midianites, and formed a
project to obtain their favour. He well knew that the
prosperity of the Israelites depended upon their continuing
to serve the living God, and he apprised the Midianites,

n >c cmo PKlpb C2DD tD^DD "pn N^I imagine, Balaam had practised at

In Latin thus : Et nan ambulavit se- Balak's sacrifices before and round the

cundiim vicem in vice, &c. The Greeks altars.

afterwards performed these ambulations h Numb. xxiv. 2 9.

thus : first, they moved towards the i Ver. 10.

west, turning from the east, singing k Ver. 4.

a sacred hymn; then they returned 1 Ver. 14 24.

from the west back to the east again ; m Ver. 1 1 .

and such turns or vices as these, I

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 219

that if they could seduce them to idolatry, they might then
have hopes of prevailing against them". This was that coun-
sel which Balaam gave the Midianites to cause the children
of Israel to commit trespass against the Lord . And it is
possible that he might amuse himself with the pretence of
even a good view in it; for had it succeeded, and had the
children of Israel been ruined by his scheme, why might
he not have hoped, after so signal a success, to have had in-
terest and influence enough over the Midianites to have
perhaps brought them by degrees into the service of his
own God, and so to have promoted both God's glory and
his own advancement together. All this might look well in
the eye of a politician : but much better had it been for
Balaam to have lived at home at Pethor, than to be laying
out these projects amongst the elders of Midian. Had there
been any design of providence to be carried on by his coming
out of private life, God both could and would have appointed
events, which by natural steps would have raised him to the
station in which he intended him to be useful to the world.
And if the providence of God had no employment for him,
how could it be worth his while to attempt the ruin of a
very numerous people, in order to gratify his own ambition ?
He might have lived at Pethor in peace and quiet, innocence
and content; and if he had never been great in the world,
he might have died the death of the righteous, and his last end
have been like his P. But he warmly pursued other views,
and was drawn away far into a foreign land, where he lost
his integrity, and brought himself to an unhappy and un-
timely end.

Whilst the Israelites were at Shittim, the Moabites became
acquainted with them, made them visits in their camp,
and invited them to their feasts; and the Israelites fell in
love with the daughters of Moab% and an evil communica-
tion corrupted their manners and led them into idolatry 1 ":
many of them went to the Moabites' sacrifices, and partook
of them, and joined in the worship 8 . Whereupon the anger

n Rev. ii. 14. q Numb. xxv. i.

Numb. xxxi. 16. r Ver. 2,3.

P Ch. xxiii. 10. s Ver. i.

220 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he commanded
Moses to order the judges to put to death those who had
committed this wickedness 1 . The Midianites were instructed
by Balaam to draw the Israelites into this evil u . They
communicated the advice to Balak, and the Moabites
joined with them in effecting it. Balaam is said to have
taught Balak to cast a stumblingblock before the children of
Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornica-
tion*. But we do not read where Balaam gave any counsel of
this sort immediately to Balak : it seems more probable, that
what he advised was to the Midianites, after he left Balak?,
though both nations joined to do what he directed. The
one acquainted the other with the scheme he had taught
them, and so either or both might, though not immediately,
yet truly be said to be taught by him ; because both followed
his doctrine in what they did in this matter. Whilst the
Israelites were under God's displeasure for this wickedness,
and a pestilence raging in the camp, Zimri the son of Salu
brought into his tent Cozbi the daughter of Zur, a prince of
Midian, in the sight of all the congregation : but Phinehas,
the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, took a javelin and went
after them, and slew them both 2 : at their deaths the plague
stayed, after four and twenty thousand had died of it a .

There may be several doubts raised about this act of Phi-
nehas : it may be thought a very rash, irregular, and unjusti-
fiable procedure. Zimri was a prince of a chief house among
the Simeonites, say our translators : the Hebrew text styles
him, prince of the house of his father Simeon**. He was perhaps
the head of that tribe , and not accountable to Phinehas
for his behaviour. How then could Phinehas have a right
to execute this vengeance upon him ? or what could be the
safety of even the highest magistrates in this ceconomy, if
private men might put on an officious zeal, and assassinate at

t Numb. xxv. 4, 5. .nyo'CJ'j IN rva ': HlbD Sui Simeo-

u Ch. xxxi. 1 6. nis patris domus princeps Salua,filius

x Rev. ii. 14. Zimri.

y Numb. xxxi. 16. c Numb. i. 4, 16. In this sense

z Ch. xxv. 6 8. Josephus took the words. He styles

a Ver. 9. him, ZapPpias 6 TTJS Su/Aewj/t'S

15 The Hebrew words are, p nm fryovpfvos. Antiq. 1. iv. c. 6. . 10.

AND PKOFANE HISTORY.

pleasure those whose actions were unjustifiable, and deserved
punishment? I answer; r. that God had expressly ordered
the persons that committed this wickedness d to be punished
with death; so that nothing was done to Zimri more than
God had directed to be the punishment of the crime he was
guilty of. 2. Before Zimri appeared in this action, Moses
had ordered the people to be punished in the regular way of
their administration, by the proper officers that were over
theme : but Zimri was, I think, one of the supreme judges,
one of the renowned men of the congregation f , a prince
of a tribe, an head of thousands in Israel, and had a right to
stand with Moses and Aaron in their government of the
people, and consequently could not regularly be brought
under sentence of the judges, who were inferior to him :
and this must have been the foundation for the insolence of
his behaviour. He brought unto his brethren a Midianitish
woman, in the sight of Moses, and in the sight of all the congre-
gation of the children of Israel, who were weeping before the
door of the tabernacles. He was so far from paying regard to
what Moses had ordered, that he acted in open defiance of
it ; and, instead of appointing the judges of his tribe to pu-
nish those who were under their jurisdiction, as God had
commanded, he openly and in the face of the congregation
abetted by his own practice what he ought to have used
his authority to correct and suppress ; so that something ex-
traordinary was here necessary to be done, to punish a
crime, which appeared too daring to be corrected in the
practice of a person, who seemed too great to be called to
account for it. And indeed, 3. we do not read that the
judges did at all exert themselves in executing the orders
which Moses had given them. Moses had required them
to slay every one his men that were joined unto Baal-peor^ :
but we hear of none that fell for this wickedness, except this
Zimri, and those that died of the plague 1 : the transgression
was too universal to be corrected by a judiciary proceeding ;

Numb. xxv. 4. S Numb. xxv. 6.

Ver. 5. h Ver. 5.

Ch. i. 1 6. i Ver. 9.

222 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

and as Moses was once before obliged to summon the Le-
vites in an extraordinary manner to punish a sin, in which
great numbers of persons, and high in station and authority,
had engaged k ; so in this case something of a like nature
was absolutely necessary to bring the offenders to condign
punishment. But, 4. since there is no lawful and justifiable
power but of God\ ; since in every government the powers
that have a right to command or to punish must be ordained
of God m , either by deriving their authority from the consti-
tution of such government ; for thus every ordinance of man n
may have a right of authority, and be the ordinance of God ;
or by being appointed by immediate revelation, and an ex-
press commission from heaven ; and since Phinehas had no
authority to punish Zimri from any law or constitution in
the Jewish ceconomy, I must confess that, unless he had
a divine command for what he did in this matter, I should
think his taking vengeance in the manner in which he
signalized himself, must want a further justification than
what he could offer for it, from the plea of a warm but well
meant zeal to assert the glory of God, and to put a stop to
the insolence and wickedness of the people; and he ought
certainly, notwithstanding such a plea, to have been called
to answer for it before the proper judges, if, 5. God had
not in an extraordinary manner declared his acceptance and
approbation of the death of Zimri. As soon as Zimri was
dead, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Phinehas, the son of
Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, hath turned my wrath
away from the children of Israel, (while he was zealous for my
sake among them,) that I consumed not the children of Israel
in my jealousy. Wherefore say, Behold, I give unto him my
covenant of peace : and he shall have it, and his seed after him,
even the covenant of an everlasting priesthood; because he was
zealous for his God, and made an atonement for the children of
Israel?. God declared this to Moses by a special revelation :
and that God did indeed reveal it, and that it was not a

k Exod. xxxii. 26. n 'A.v8pwirivi) KTiffis, I Pet. ii. 13.

1 Rom. xiii. i. o Rom. xiii. 2.

m Ibid. P Numb. xxv. 10 13.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

pretence of Moses to protect Phinehas, was apparent to the
congregation, being sufficiently attested by the plague's
ceasing as soon as Zimri was deacU. I am sensible that
what is already offered is sufficient to vindicate the beha-
viour of Phinehas: if God himself declared him to be ac-
quitted, who should condemn him 2 and his example can
lay no foundation for a dangerous imitation; for it will in
no ways prove that an illegal action, though proceeding
from a most upright heart, zealously affected in a good thing,
is ever to be justified, unless God, by an express and well
attested revelation from heaven, declares his patronage and
acceptance of it. But, 6. I might add further, that what
Phinehas did was not the effect of zeal only, but rather
God revealed himself to him before he attacked Zimri, and
required him to cut off that high offender, and consequently
Phinehas had as clear and full a commission for what he
did, as Moses had for the discharge of the offices unto
which God appointed him, though Moses and the congre-
gation were not at first apprised of it. Phinehas is said by
the death of Zimri to have made an atonement for the
children of Israel 1 ". But what merit could there be in the
death of Zimri ? how could that expiate the sins of the
congregation ? or what had Phinehas to do to pretend to
make atonement, unless God had appointed him ? for no
man taJceth this honour to himself, nor can perform this office
with any effect, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron 5 :
or if Phinehas had been entitled to endeavour to procure a
reconciliation of God to his people, he must surely have at-
tempted it in some way which God appointed, and not by a
strange service, which God commanded him not*, and which
must therefore have been more likely to offend than to
please him". But all these difficulties are fully cleared by
what Moses was ordered to declare to the Israelites : Wliere-
fore say, Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace*. The
verse is injudiciously translated. The Hebrew words, hin-

q Numb. xxv. 8. u See the case of Nadab and Abihu ;

r Ver. 13. book xi.

8 Heb. v. 4. x Numb. xxv. 12.

t Lev. x. i, &c.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

neni noihen lo barithi shalom, signify, Behold, it was I who
gave to him my covenant of peace? ; and the declaration was
intended to inform the congregation that Phinehas had not
done a rash action, moved to it by a mere warmth of heart,
but that God had directed him to what he had performed ;
made him an express covenant upon his performing it;
assured him, that the doing it should obtain pardon for the
people; and that upon the death of Zimri and Cozbi, slain
by his hand, the wickedness that had been committed in
the camp should be forgiven. In this view of the fact all
is clear, and it is easy to see how a covenant of peace was
given to Phinehas ; how he was enabled to make atonement
for the people ; and in what sense the death of the offenders
slain by him was such atonement; and what he did stands
clear of the objections that can be offered against an irre-
gular zeal : for it was not an instance of such a zeal, but of
one more defensible, namely, of a zealous and intrepid per-
formance of what God by an express revelation had required
of him.

God was indeed pleased to promise here, ver. 13, by
Moses, an addition to the favour before granted to Phi-
nehas : God before gave him his covenant of peace ; but
this extended no further than to the making him the instru-
ment of obtaining pardon for the sin, upon account of which
the people were under his displeasure. But now, because
Phinehas was zealous for his God, and had performed the
service he was called to with a ready heart, God was
pleased to promise, that the grant made to him should stand
in force until it conveyed the priesthood to him, and to his
seed after him 2 . Our translators render the I3th verse,
And lie shall have it, and his seed after him, even the covenant
of an everlasting priesthood. But this version is far from ex-
pressing the true meaning of the place. The Hebrew words
rightly translated are, And it shall be to him, and to his seed

7 The Hebrew text is thus written and pointed :

na DN i 1 ? ]n: '

i. e. Ecce me dantem illl pactum meum pacts. Ecce, me, dantem, i. e. Ecce me, qui
dabam. The participle is of the imperfect tense as well as of the present.
z Numb. xxv. 13.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

after him, a covenant [or grant] of the everlasting priesthood*:
i. e. my grant or promise shall not here expire, upon his
having obtained what I agreed to give him, namely, a par-
don for my people ; but shall continue still in force, to assure
him, that in due time he shall himself be high-priest, and
his seed after him. God had before this time limited the
priesthood to Aaron and his descendants, and it was to
be to them an everlasting priesthood throughout their genera-
tions^; it was ever to descend by inheritance in their fami-
lies from generation to generation : and this it might have
done, though neither Phinehas nor any child of his had
ever been possessed of it ; for Phinehas and his son or sons,
whether he had one or more, might have died before Elea-
zar, and, in such case, Eleazar's next heir would have had
the priesthood, and it would have gone down to his, and
not to Phinehas's descendants : but the promise now made
to Phinehas was an assurance to him of God's protection to
preserve both him and his seed, so as that the priesthood
should descend to them. The commentators have, I think,
all of them run into a difficulty, which they are not able to
get out of: they imagine the term everlasting to be here
joined to the priesthood, to express the continuance of the
priesthood amongst Phinehas's descendants, as if God here
promised Phinehas and his seed after him the grant of an
everlasting priesthood, or of a priesthood which should ever
remain in their hands, without being at any time translated
into any other branch of Aaron's family : but then they are
at a loss how to make out the performance of this promise ;
for they observe that Eli, who was high-priest in the days
of Samuel, was of the family of Ithamar, and that therefore
the priesthood went out of the hands of the descendants of
Phinehas when it came to Eli, and that it did not return
again to them until, after some successions, it came again
to Zadok in the days of David. But I think this difficulty
might be avoided. We need not suppose the priesthood to

a The Hebrew words are,

n'ns ronrj nnn vm ism 1 ? i i^nn'm
Seculi sacerdotii pactum eum post ejus semini el ei erit et

b Exod. xl. 15. c Vid Cleric. Comment, in loc.

226 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

be here called everlasting, to express a design of a perpetual
continuance of it to Phinehas's descendants, but rather the
term everlasting is the appellation annexed to the priesthood
in its limitation to the family of Aaron d ; and suggests no
more than that the priesthood of Aaron should descend to
them. God made to Phinehas and to his seed after him,
not an everlasting grant of the priesthood, as some com-
mentators take it e , nor a grant of an everlasting priesthood,
as our English version renders the place, but rather a grant
of the everlasting priesthood; of the priesthood limited to
Aaron and his descendants by that appellation. And this
promise would have been fulfilled, if the priesthood had de-
scended to Eleazar and his son only. I am sensible that the
Jews before and about our Saviour's time had a notion, that
Phinehas had a grant of an everlasting priesthood to him and
his posterity. The author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus seems
to have been of this opinion f , as well as Philo JudseusS, and
others ; but in fact there was not such a perpetuity of the
possession of the priesthood in this family ; no inspired
writer has, I think, hinted the passage to contain such a
promise, and the text does not appear to imply it.

Upon the ceasing of the plague, God commanded Moses
and Eleazar to take a poll of the Israelites 11 , at casting up of
which the people were found to be 601730 men. of twenty
years old and upwards, without the Levites 1 ; and the Le-
vites from a month old and upwards were 23OOO k : and
from this poll it appeared, that there was no one person now
alive of those whom Moses and Aaron had numbered in the
wilderness of Sinai, except Moses himself and Caleb and
Joshua 1 . At this time the daughters of Zelophehad repre-
sented the death of their father, and his having left no

d Exod. xl. 15. f Ecclus. xlv. 24.

e The critics write the text [Sarith 8 Philo says, there was given to Phi-

Cehunnah le Nolam} Pactum sacerdotii nehas, TrayKparrjO'iai' ispufffotis atT<,

sempiternum, A covenant of the priest- Kal yevei ttXtipovon-iav ava<paipeTOV. de

hood for ever. Le Clerc says, Fcedus Vit. Mosis, lib. i. p. 649. ed. Par. 1640.

sacerdotii perpetuum. But they mistake h Numb. xxvi. i, 2.

the word in the text. The Hebrew i Ver. 51.

text is Nolani, and not le Nolam, for k Ver. 62.

ever. 1 Ver. 64, 65.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

sons, and Moses brought their cause before the Lord, and
received a law for the settling their inheritance". And now
Moses was ordered to arm a thousand out of each tribe, and
to send them under the command of Phinehas to war against
the Midianites , and God delivered into their hand the
rulers of Midian ; and without the loss of one man they
made an absolute conquest of all their territories P. Balaam
lived in Midian at this time, and fell by the sword of the
Israelites c i.

The Israelites were now in possession of a considerable
country, part of which the children of Reuben and Gad de-
sired to have for their inheritance, and came to Moses and
Eleazar to petition for it r . Moses at first thought their re-
quest highly unreasonable, and remonstrated, that for them
to desire to be settled, before Canaan was conquered, would
be a refusal to serve in the war, unto which God had ap-
pointed them as well as the other Israelites, and might bring
down the divine vengeance upon the congregation, if they
should consent to it s . Hereupon the two tribes explained
their meaning; that they intended not to desert their bre-
thren, but only to settle their families in these parts ; that
they designed themselves to march with the camp, and to
assist in reducing the land of Canaan i . Upon these terms
Moses consented, and ordered Eleazar the priest, and Joshua
the son of Nun, and the chief fathers of the tribes, to divide
to the children of Gad and of Reuben, and to the half tribe
of Manasseh, all the land which the Israelites had conquered
on the east side of Jordan u . After this he gave directions for
dividing the land of Canaan, when they should have con-
quered it x , charging them to expel the inhabitants, and to
demolish all the monuments of their idolatries y ; declaring
to them, that if they were remiss herein, terrible inconve-
niences would ensue 2 . Then he described the land, telling

m Numb, xxvii. i, 2, &c. s Ver. 6 15.

n Ver. 511. t Ver. 1627.

Ch. xxxi. i 6. u Ver. 33.

P Ver. 7 14. x Ch. xxxiii. 54.

q Ver. 8. y Ver. 52, 53.

r Ch. xxxii. i. z Ver. 55, 56.

VOL. II. Q

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

them the bounds and extent of it% and named the persons
who should divide it when conquered b . He appointed them
to allot the Levites their cities 6 , and to set out the cities of
refuge d : he settled an inconvenience arising from the in-
heritance of daughters, upon a remonstrance brought before
him by the sons of Gilead 6 . And now he was reminded
that he was not to go into the land of promise f : he prayed
God to permit him to go into it ; but his prayer was not
accepted s. He was ordered to go up to mount Abarim or
Pisgah, and from thence to take a view of the land ; but he
was expressly told that he should not go over Jordan 11 .
Hereupon he begged of God to name a person to lead the
people, and God directed him to appoint Joshua 1 : and at
this time, I imagine, the laws mentioned in the 28th, 29th,
and 3oth chapters of Numbers were given.

On the first day of the eleventh month of the fortieth year
after the exit out of Egypt k , Moses began to exhort the
Israelites in the words recorded in the first chapter of Deu-
teronomy : and he continued his exhortation daily, until he
had offered to their consideration what we are told in that
book he spake to them. Then he called for Joshua, and
exhorted him to be of good courage in his leading the peo-
ple, assuring him of the divine assistance and protection 1 . In
the next place he delivered the book of the Law which he
had written to the priests and Levites, and unto all the
elders of Israel, and commanded them to have it read once
in seven years to the people 1 ". Then he presented himself
and Joshua before the Lord in the tabernacle of the con-
gregation, where the Lord appeared in the pillar of the
cloud, and revealed to Moses, that the people after his
death would forsake the law, and bring upon themselves
many evils 11 . In order to warn them against so fatal a per-
verseness. he was commanded to write the song recorded in

a Numb, xxxiv. i 16. & Deut. iii. 27. Numb, xxvii. 12,

b Ver. 1729. 13.

e Ch. xxxv. 28. i Ver. 16 18.

d Ver. 9 34. k Deut. i. 3.

e Ch. xxxvi. 1 Ch. xxxi. 7, 8.

f Ch. xxvii. 12. m Ver. 9 13.

S Deut. iii. 25, 26. n Ver. 14, 18.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

the 33d chapter of Deuteronomy : Moses therefore wrote
this song, and taught it the children of Israel P, and he added
it, and an account of what had passed unto this time, to the
book of the Law ; and when he had thus finished the book,
he ordered the Levites to put it in the side of the ark of
the covenant, and there to keep itn. After this he blessed
the tribes 1 ", and then went up from the plains of Moab
to the top of Pisgah 5 ; and the Lord having from thence
given him a prospect of the land, said unto him, This is the
land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob,
saying, I will give it unto thy seed : I have caused thee to see it
with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither*. We do
not read that Moses came any more down the mount, but
rather, he died there in the mount, whither he went up, as
Aaron died in mount Hor u . He was an hundred and twenty
years old when he died, but his eye was not dim, nor his
natural force abated x : he died about the end of the eleventh
month, A. M. 2553 : the Israelites mourned for him one
month, or thirty days^, which I imagine concluded the year.
He was buried in the valley over against Beth-Peor z ; but-
there being no monument erected to distinguish his grave,
in a few years the particular place of it was forgotten a .

o Deut. xxxi. 19. tiq. lib. iv. c. 8. . 48. Philo Jud. de

P Ver. 22. vit. Mosis, 1. iii. ad fin. And the pre-

Q Deut. xxxi. 24, 26. See Prideaux, sent text of the 34th chapter of Deut.

Connect, vol. i. b. iii. ver. 6. may seem to give some handle

r Deut. xxxiii. Simeon is not men- for them: it is there written, "I3pn

tioned in this chapter; but we must in** vejekobber aotho, i. e. and he bu-

not think that Moses forgot or omitted rind him ; as if Moses was not buried

to bless this tribe. The Alexandrian by human hands, but by God him-

MS. of the Septuagint reads the 6th self; and in a place unknown to the

verse thus : Let Reubtn live and not Israelites. But the LXX. render the

die, and let the men of Simennbe many , place, KOJ. sQafyav avrbv, not he buried

or not few. The word Simeon was wrote him, but they buried him. The ancient

in this verse by Moses ; but the copy- original Hebrew text was, I should

ists have omitted it by mistake in think, undoubtedly illp'l in the

transcribing. plural number, and the transcribers

s Deut. xxxiv. i. inadvertently dropped the final letter.

* Ver. 4. The Israelites were the persons who

u Ver. 5. buried Moses, and the remark added

x Ver. 7. to the end of the verse only hints, that

y Ver. 8. no monument having been erected

z Ver. 6. over him, the place where he was bu-

a The Hebrew writers have had ried was not certainly known at the

many fancies concerning the death time when the 34th chapter of Deuter-

and burial of Moses. Vid. Joseph. An- onomy was written.

230 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

After so large an account as I have given of the several
transactions that Moses was concerned in, the reader must
greatly anticipate me in what I might attempt to offer upon
his conduct and character. He was remarkably eminent in
a high station of life ; had a great share of power and au-
thority; an absolute command of above 600000 men fit to
bear arms, besides their families; and he was advanced to
this dignity, not from any schemes of his own politics and
ambition ; not from any accidental success of arms ; not
from the heats and chances which commonly give rise to
and direct a popular choice ; but by the special command
and appointment of God himself: and herein, to use the
hint of Philo b , he acted in a post above any thing of this
world, was superior in character to the most exalted of those
who conduct the designs of the greatest princes of the earth ;
for he was the immediate minister of Almighty God to a
chosen people, and he behaved himself so well in the dis^
charge of the trust committed to him, as to be honoured
with this testimony from his great Master, that he was
faithful to him that appointed him in all his house*. If we
consider the administration of Moses, we shall, from the manner
of it, see all reason to conclude that no views of his own,
but an absolute submission and adherence to the will of God
revealed to him, must have directed him in all the several
parts of it. For what was the private advantage either to
himself or to his family, that he endeavoured to acquire
from all his labours ? He had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer ;
but we do not find that in forming the Jewish polity he
made any particular provision for either of them. His sons
were of the children of Levi, and as Levites had their ap-
pointed courses in the work and service of the tabernacle d ,
but no privileges above other Levites ; the priesthood was
settled upon the family of Aaron 6 . As Moses had the su-
preme direction of the civil magistracy during his life, had
he conducted his measures by the private rules of his own

b Aicupepoi/rus TifjL-f]ffas rbv riyffj.6va rov c Numb. xii. 7.
cwrbs, /col avriTi/jL^Oels UTT* avrov' ri/j.^) d j Chron. xxiii. 14.
Se a.p/j.6TTovffa ffo<p$ OepaTreteiv rb irpbs e Exod. xl. 12 15. Numb. xvi. 9,

ov. Philo de Vit Mosis, 1. iii. 10, 40.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 231

wisdom, is it probable that he would have given away at his
death the command of the people both from his own and
from his brother's family into another tribe, to Joshua the
son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim f ? Where are instances of
such a resignation to be found in the world? When indeed
Alexander the Great was to die, and was solicited to name
his successor, he is said to have made no provision for any
of his own family ; but to have declared it to be his will,
that the most worthy of it should have his kingdoms. I
cannot but question what is thus reported; for Plutarch,
who has been very exact in collecting the circumstances of
Alexander's death, informs us, that he was speechless before
the persons came to him, to whom others relate him to have
made this disposition 11 , although, if he did make it, it is
obvious that not a disengagement of his private affections
to his own family, but a true sense of the temper of his army
and the state of his affairs might lead him to it. He knew his
extensive empire was not so well established as to be likely
to descend to his heirs ; but that, at his death, the generals,
who had commanded in his armies, and had a place in his
councils, would form parties, and divide his acquisitions j ;
and he had no time to settle the claims of their several pre-
tensions; but could only wish them all well, and the best
success to the most deserving. But Moses's affairs were in
another situation. If the will of God had not been his di-
rection, he might have appointed himself a successor, and
the person recommended by his nomination would, humanly
speaking, have been as unanimously received and submitted
to by the people as Joshua himself.

There are many particulars, that to a thinking person
must abundantly prove Moses's conduct in leading the
Israelites to have been directed by an immediate revelation.
It is not likely that he should of his own head, when he

f Numb. xiii. 8. Deut. xxxi. linqueret regnum, respondit, Ei qui esset

S Quint. Curtii Hist. 1. x. c. 5. Ar- optimus: cteterwn proevidere jam, ob id

rian. de Expedit. Alex. 1. vii. Diod. Sic. certamen, magnos funebres ludosparari

Hist. 1. xvii. sibi. Hist. 1. x. c. 5. Vid. Arrian. de

h Vid. Plutarch, in Vit. Alex, ad fin. Expedit. Alex. lib. vii, Diodor. Sic. lib.

i Curtius says, Qucerentibus cui re- xvii. c. 117.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK XII.

left Egypt, have made the march, which he led the people,
to the Red sea k ; much less would he without a divine com-
mand have had a thought of attempting for forty years to-
gether such dangers and difficulties as the wilderness ex-
posed him to, and out of which he could foresee no escape
but by miraculous deliverances. The march of Alexander
the Great over the sands of Libya to the temple of Jupiter
Ammon has been variously censured as a very wild expedi-
tion 1 ; though certainly such a march, attempted and per-
formed with the greatest dispatch, could be but one single
trial at most of what Moses habituated the Israelites to for
forty years together. Besides, Alexander had an aim visible
enough, and political" 1 , to tempt him to his undertaking ;
but if we set aside the divine command, Moses could have
no pretence for harassing and endangering his people with
such perpetual extremities. We find many of the princes
of the congregation thought Moses's conduct so palpably
contradictory to all rules of human prudence, that they re-
monstrated it to be the greatest blindness for the people to
be any further led on by him n .

It may perhaps be suggested, that Moses's detaining the
people so long in the wilderness might be to discipline
them, to inure them to hardships ; to give them a various
experience, that dangers and difficulties, which at first sight
seem insuperable, may by patience and good conduct be
borne and conquered : and that he marched the Israelites
here no longer than until he had formed them to a compe-
tent skill and courage for the conquest of Canaan : that the
wilderness was a place well suited for his thus exercising
his army, affording him a secure retreat from the attacks of
all nations, and opportunities to try the temper and courage
of the Israelites daily with the appearances of various dan-
gers, into which he might lead them as far as he thought

k See vol. ii. b. ix. tulit nomen filii mihi, recipere ipsis

1 See Prideaux, Connect, parti. b.vii. rebus quas agimus non alienum fuit :

m Illud pene risu dignum fuit, quod utinam Indi quoque me Deum esse

Hermolaus postulabat me (says Alex- credant : fama enim bella constant, et

ander) ut aversarer Jovem, cujus ora- ssepe quod falso creditum est, veri vicem

culo cognoscor. An etiam quid Dii obtinuit. Curtius, lib. viii. c. 8.

respondeant in mea potestate est ? Ob- n Numb. xvi. 14.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 233

proper, and retire whenever he thought it expedient to at-
tempt no further. But what may be thus intimated cannot
possibly be allowed, unless it can be proved that the Israel-
ites could have subsisted in those deserts, if they had not had
the miraculous supply which God was pleased to give them
from heaven . The camp which Moses led was, men, wo-
men, and children, a body of about two or three millions
of people, and a country both of large extent and great
plenty must at first sight appear necessary to bear and to
maintain them : but the wilderness was a land of drought,
and of the shadow of death ; a land, where a parched turf and
withered shrubs must, to any one that should enter it, give
a perpetual picture of decay and desolation : it was a land,
to use the words of the prophet, which no man passed
through, and where no man dwelt?: and if God had not di-
rected it, it is not to be conceived that Moses could have
projected to have sustained and kept together such an host
as he led in so unpromising a country. Besides; if what
is above offered was the reason of the encampments in the
wilderness, how shall we account for Moses's not attempting
to enter Canaan, upon his having as promising an opportu-
nity, to all human appearance, as he could ever hope for?
When the spies returned from searching the land'*, it was
the opinion of some that the Israelites were able to con-
quer it, if they would march with courage and resolution to
attack it r ; others indeed were of another mind, and were
for returning back to Egypt again 5 . There was great heat
and debate in the camp upon this subject* ; but at last,
after Moses had at large remonstrated to them, they were
all willing to make the attempt, nay, and so resolutely bent
upon it, that all he could say against it could not prevent
their marching". And now would not one think the camp
spirited up to a temper, such as a wise general would have
wished for, and made use of? But we find Moses acted a
part directly contrary to what in human prudence might

o Exod. xvi. s Numb. xiii. 31. xiy. 4,

P Jer. ii. 6 t Ver. 6 10.

Q Numb. xiii. 25. u Ver. 41, 44.
r Ver. 30.

234 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

have been expected from him : he assured the people, that
no attempt they should now make would be crowned with
success; that forty years must pass before they should be
able to enter the land x . Will it be here said, that probably
Moses judged very wisely of his army ; that he knew well the
courage they pretended to be no more than a sudden heat,
and that it would not support him through the war that was
before him; and that many years' discipline was really ne-
cessary to form them for greater things than they were yet
capable of, before he could hope to reduce by them so many
and such warlike nations as possessed Canaan ; and that
therefore he assigned them forty years to fit them for it?
But surely, if this had been his purpose, a shorter respite
might have answered his intentions ; and, above all things, he
would never have denounced, that all the men of war, that
were then the strength and flower of the camp, must be
brought down to their graves before he could hope to be
able to attempt what was the design of their expedition :
but this was what Moses without any reserve now offered
to them : As truly as Hive, saith the Lord, your carcases shall
fall in this wilderness ; and all that were numbered of you, ac*
cording to your whole number, from twenty years old and up-
ward doubtless ye shall not come into the land your car-
cases^ they shall fall in this wilderness?. Here now is a view
of things for a wise general to pretend to offer to his whole
army : to assure almost every man amongst them capable of
bearing arms, that he had now no hope of bringing them
to any good end of all their labours ; but that the only thing
he could pretend to for them, was to carry them about for
forty years together, from difficulty to difficulty, and bury
them in the desert, God indeed might appoint them this
punishment for their disobedience z ; and Moses, in confidence
of an almighty support, might securely pronounce their
doom to them ; and the people, convinced that it was God's
appointment, might submit to it. But unless we allow all
this, what general would have shocked a whole army in this
manner, or have suffered any attempt to have such impres-

x Numb. xiv. 33. y Ver. 28, 29, 30, 32. z Ver. 28, 29, 30, 32.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 235

sions made upon them ? for what could such a view of things
naturally produce, but numerous tumults, mutinies, and a total
defection ?

Our modern deists are indeed ready to allow Moses the
character of a great and wise man ; to suppose him far su-
perior in all points of science to any of, or to all the people
under his direction ; and they imagine him to have given
laws to the Israelites, and to have formed their common-
wealth with great art and address ; but to have had no more
divine assistance towards it than Minos, Numa, Lycurgus,
or other famous legislators of the heathen world. All these
were as highly thought of by their followers as Moses by
his Israelites a , and they all pretended to have been favoured
with revelations from heaven, in order to create a reverence
of their establishments amongst their people ; and some of
them are recorded to have been supported with miracles in
their undertakings. They were wise and learned men ; they
gave every appearance an artful turn, and made the ordi-
nary course of nature seem full of miracles to persons of in-
ferior understandings, for the carrying forward of their pur-
poses amongst them. Quintus Curtius informs us that
Alexander the Great erected over his own pavilion an arti-
ficial signal, to give notice for a decampment of his army;
that it was contrived of materials so as to be conspicuous in
the day-time by a great smoke issuing from it, that in the
night-time it appeared to be on fire b . A modern writer

<paal irpwrov aypdirrots v6- KOIV^V 'EffTiav, Trapa Se rots 'lovSaiois

ra TA.^j077 Kal &LOVV rbv Mucr^vrbv'laS) iriKa\ovfj.evov 6c6v fire

rit/, &v8pa Kal rr} tyvxfi peyav, Kal ry Qavpaffrty Kal 6eiav o\cas evvoiav e!vai

Koiv6rarov r<av /jLVfjiJLovfvofjLfvwv' Kpivavras rfyv /j.e\\ov(rav uxpfX^ffeiv av-

/j.r)j/e$a)K- Bpu-rruv irA.rj#os, ere Kal irpbs T^]V virep-

vai Tofrrovs, &s /j.yd\wv ayaQuv alriovs oxty Kal SvvafJ.iv rcav evpe'tv \yo/j.evcav

' >r 'E\\r)<n Trotfjo'ai robs v6/j.ovs diro^Ae^aj/TO rbv ox^-ov,

Mivooa, Trapa 8e /j.a\\ov viraKovfffa'Oai. 8ia\a$6vTas. Dio-

rbv /J.GV Trapa dor. Sic. lib. i. c. 94.

A.ibs,Tbv8eirap" > ATr6\\<i)i'os(pr)a'avTaTo6- ^ Tuba, cum castra mo\ere vellet,

rovs et'\rj4>eVar Kal Trap' erepots 5e irAei'o- signum dabat : cujus sonus plerumque

<rtv f6v(n irapafifSoTai TOVTO rb yevos Trjs tumultuantium fremitu exoriente baud

eirivoias vTrdpai, Kal iro\\uv ayaOwv at- satis exaudiebatur. Ergo perticam,

nov yevfaGairoisirfLO'de'iffi' Trapa/ji.fv yap quse undique conspici posset, supra

TO?S ' Api/j.ao'Tro'is ZaOpav(TTir]v larTopovffi, prsetorium statuit, ex qua signum e-

rbv ayaObv kainova TrpoairoifoaffQai rovs minebat pariter omnibus conspicuum.

vofj-ovs avrtp 8iS6vai, Trapa Se rots bvofjia- Observabatur ignis noctu, fumus in-

Tfrais Zd/j.o\iv oixravrus r^v tcrdiu. Quint. Curt. lib. v. c. 2.

236 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

insinuates the pillar of the cloud and of fire, which directed
the marches of the Israelites , to have been a contrivance of
Moses of a like nature : others have intimated it to have no
greater miracle than the pillar of light which conducted
Thrasybulus and his followers from Phyla d . But in answer
hereto let us consider,

I. That if Moses has recorded nothing but what was real
fact, it must be undeniably evident that the hand of God
was most miraculously employed in leading the Israelites
out of Egypt, in giving their law, in conducting them
through the wilderness, and in bringing them into Canaan.
If the miracles were wrought in the land of Egypt, and the
judgments executed upon Pharaoh and his people, as Moses
has related 6 : if the Red sea was really divided before the
Israelites, and Pharaoh and his host drowned in it, as Moses
has recorded f : if a miraculous supply of food was given
daily to the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years toge-
ther g : if God did indeed speak to them in an audible voice
from heaven h : if their laws were given as Moses informs
us ' : if their tabernacle was directed, and, when finished, if
a cloud covered the tent, and the glory of the Lord filled the
tabernacle, and rested upon it in a cloud by day and in fire
by night k : if this cloud removed visibly to conduct their
journeyings 1 : if the many oppositions of the people were
miraculously punished in the several manners related to us m ,
and the miracles that are recorded were wrought to testify
the divine appointment of the institutions enjoined, when
the people would have varied from them n : if a prophet,
even of another nation, corrupt in the inclination of his
heart, and tempted by great offers to speak evil of this peo-
ple, was by very astonishing miracles prevented from de-

c Exod. xl. 38. edit. Oxon.

d 'AAA& KOI paffvfiov\(f rovs ^KTTC- e Exod. vii xii.

a6vTas aTrb^>v\TisKara.yay6vTi Kalf$ov\o- f Ch. xiv.

fj,fvcf) XaQelv, ffTvXos dfyybs yiverai Sia S Ch. xvi. 35.

ruv arpifiuv Uvrr T$ paffv$ov\cp vi>K- h Ch. xix. xx. Deut. iv. 12, 33,36.

rap, a<T\-fivov iced 8v(TXi[ji.epiov TOV Kara- i Exod. ubi sup. Deut. v. &c.

j yeyov6ros, irvp fcaparo -rrpor}- k Exod. xxxv. xl. 34.

, ftirep avrovs airTaicmas irpo- 1 Ver. 38.

, Kara T^V Movvvxtw %f\nrei', m Numb, xi.^xii.] xiv. xvi. xxi.

HvOa vvv 6 rrjs Qcofffydpov Ba^u&s tffri. xxv. &c.

Clem. Alex. Stromat. 1. i. c. 24. p. 418. n Levit. x. Numb. xvi. xvii. &c.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 237

claring any thing about them diverse from what Moses had
represented to be the purpose of God towards them : if all
these, and other things of a like nature, that might be enu-
merated, were really and truly done as Moses has related,
well might he call heaven and earth to witness for himP;
well might he observe, that no such things had ever been
done for any nation <l ; and we, who read them, cannot but
conclude from them, that the power of God did indeed mi-
raculously interest itself in the appointing the law and polity
of this people, and in conducting them to their settlement in
the promised land.

II. That the facts recorded by Moses were really done as
he relates them, must be allowed by any one who considers,
that Moses wrote his books in the very age in which the
things he records were done, to be read by the very persons
who had seen and known the facts to be true which are
recorded by him; that they might testify and transmit their
sense of the truth of them to their posterity. And this is a
material circumstance, in which the "reports we have of the
heathen miracles are greatly deficient. Clemens Alexandri-
nus relates, that Thrasybulus led his company under the
guidance of a pillar of light in the heavens 1 "; but Clemens
Alexandrinus lived above six hundred years after the time of
this supposed fact. Upon what authority he related it we are
not told ; but we find no such prodigy recorded in the best
heathen writers, who, had it been fact, would surely have
made mention of it. Xenophon 8 , Diodorus Siculus*, Cor-
nelius Nepos u , have related this expedition of Thrasybulus;
but none of them mention any such miracle assistant to him :
so that we have all reason to think there was none such ;
but that Clemens Alexandrinus was imposed upon in the
account he received of it. And this is generally true of the
miracles reported in heathen history. Subsequent writers,
after large intervals of time, tell us things said to have been

Numb, xxiii. xxiv. s Vid. Histor. Grsec. 1. ii.

P Deut. xxx. 19. t Diodor. Hist. 1. xiv.

a Ch. iv. 33, 34. u Corn. Nep. in Vit. Thrasybuli.

r Stromat. 1. i.

238 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

done, but without sufficient vouchers to attest the facts re-
lated by them : whereas Moses wrote of the things in which
himself had been the chief agent, and required his books to
be repeatedly read, and considered over and over*, by the
very persons who had seen and known the truth of what
he wrote as clearly and fully as himself, in order to have
the facts recorded by him go down attested to be true to the
succeeding generations; so that Moses could not falsify the
facts related by him, unless the generation he lived in con-
curred with him in a design to impose upon their descend-
ants in all these matters; or were so over-reached and de-
ceived by his superior skill and management, as to be made
believe that they had seen and lived in a most surprising
scene of things, which, all the time, were really not done
in the manner they were taught to conceive and imagine.
But,

III. If we consider the nature and manner of the mira-
cles that bear testimony to Moses's administration, it is im-
possible to conceive the Israelites deceived in them : they
could never have been led on, and for so long a time, in an
imaginary belief of such things as Moses had recorded, if
either the things were not done, or not done as he has re-
lated them. As to the signs and prodigies offered by the
heathen writers to give a sanction to the foundations of their
kingdoms, we may generally see, that the very writers
which report them did not believe themy, and that they
were known artifices of their great legislators, calculated
only to have weight upon their populaces; but in no wise
supported against the objections that a thinking person
might easily find to offer to them. When Romulus died,
the Roman historians tell us, that he was taken up into
heaven 2 ; but we do not find that they ever had such proofs
of his assumption, as to prevent a suspicion of his being
murdered in the age when his death happened, or to cause

x Deut. xxxi. 10. Antiq. Rom. 1. ii. c. 56. Plutarch, in

y Vid. Liv. Hist. Prsefat. Romul.

z Liv. lib. i. c. 16. Dionys. Halic.

AND PROFANE HISTOEY. 239

after-ages to give full credit to what they attempted to have
believed about it a . In like manner, when he was created
king, we are told that a divine approbation, discovering itself
by an auspicious lightning, attended his inauguration 5 ,
and that it was an institution appointed to be for ever ob-
served among the Romans, that no person should be ad-
mitted to command the people, unless the gods by such sign
from heaven should confirm the election 6 . But Dionysius of
Halicarnassus is, I think, the only writer that reports the
Roman magistracies to have had the countenance of such a
confirmation, and he confesses their elections in his time to
have fallen a great deal short of it d ; for he tells, us, that at
their elections a public augur was to declare the expected
lightning to have happened, whether any appearance of it
had been seen or no e . Plutarch seems to have thought all
that was offered about these f lightnings to have been fabu-
lous : and if we consider how uncertain it is whether Dio-
nysius had any good vouchers to support what he writes to
have been the facts of those times s, we shall have just reason
to imagine that the most early elections of the Roman ma-
gistrates had no more a divine sanction than the more mo-
dern, and that what Dionysius relates about them was one
of those fictions by which the heathens endeavoured to give
a lustre to their ancient institutions 11 . In like manner, when
Numa was to form the religion of the Romans, he affected a
rural and retired life, was much alone, and pretended to
have many conversations with a deity, who instructed him
in his institutions ' : but it is obvious to remark, that he

a Fuisse credo turn quoque aliquos, f TotJra jiiei/ olv ret /j.v0u>5t] /cal yeXota

qui discerptum regem Patrum mani- TT]V ruv roVe avdpdnrcav fTrtSeiicvvTai 8id-

bus taciti arguerent. Manavit enim 6f<nv irpbs TO Oeiov, V 6 Mur/jibs avrois

hsec quoque sed perobscura fama. Liv. eveTeo'nifftv. Plut. in Numa, p. 7- e d-

ubi sup. Dionys. Halicar. et Plutarch. Xyl. Par. 1624.

in Romul. in loc. supra citat. S Vid. Liv. Hist. lib. vi. c. i .

b Dionys. Halicar. lib. ii. c. 5. h Datur hsec venia antiquitati, ut

c Halicar. lib. ii. c. 6. miscendo humana divinis, primordia

d Uftravrai 5' eV rots itaO' ri/j.as XP&- urbium augustiora faciat. Liv. Prsef. ad

vois' irXty olov eiKwv ns avrov AelVeTcu, Hist. 1. i.

rrjs 6<rlas TCIVTTJS eW/ca 71^0^61/17. Id. i Vid. Plutarch, in Numa, p. 61,

ibid. 62. Omnium primum rem ad mul-

e Tav Se irap6v TOW Tii/es bpviQovKfawv titudinem imperitam, et illis seculis

bv e/c roC S-rifjioalov <pcp6fjLevoi, acrrpa- efficacissimam, deorum metum inji-

avTo7s /n.-nvvfii' (paa-lv IK TWV apt- ciendum ratus est: qui quum descen-

oil y^vo^viriv. Id. ibid. dere ad animos sine aliquo commento

240 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

gave his people no other evidence of his having been assisted
by a divine presence, than the testimony of his own saying
it k . And in this way we may observe of the Cretan Minos,
of the Lycurgus of the Lacedemonians, of the Arimaspian
Zathraustes, and of the Getan Zamolxis, compared with
Moses by Diodorus ' ; they were all said to have the will of
their gods revealed to them ; but there is so little appear-
ance of proof of what is thus said, that Plutarch's observa-
tion cannot but be allowed to be true of them m , they pre-
tended to revelations in order to be better able to manage
their people, though in truth no revelations had been made
to them. But we cannot say thus of Moses ; for Moses did
not, after their manner, pretend to his Jews, as Diodorus
expresses it", that the god Jao gave him his laws ; but he
made an open appeal to the senses of all the thousands of
them, whether they did not all of them abundantly know it
to be so as well as he. The Lord our God, said he, made a
covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant
with our fathers, hut with its, even us, who are all of us here
alive this day. The Lord talked with you face to face in the
mount, out of the midst of the fire . If Moses had only told
his Israelites, that their God had appeared to him in private,
and given him the laws which he recommended to them :
or if he had only related to them a confused account of some
signs and prodigies known only to himself, and believed by
them upon his reporting them, Moses and the heathen legis-
lators might indeed be compared to one another. But the
circumstances of Moses's administration are of another sort ;
and, as they are so, to say that Moses could make a camp of
above 600000 grown up men, besides the women and chil-
dren, believe they heard the voice of God out of the midst of

miraculi non posset, simulat sibi cum 8u<nca0e/cTO Kal Svffdpeffra trK^Q-i^ x fl ~

Dea Egeria congressus nocturnes esse, pov/j-evoi, Kal fjitydXas 4iri(t>epoi>Tfs TCUS

ejus se monitu, quse acceptissima Diis iroXirelais KoavoTo^ias Trpocreiroi^aravTo

essent sacra instituere. Liv. Hist. 1. i. r^v cbrb 6eov 86av, avTois eKflvois Trpbs

C. 19. ovs ea-x^iMTl^ovro ffcor^ptov o&ffav. Plut.

k Vid. Plut. Liv. Dionys. Halicarn. in Num. p. 62. ed. ead.
ubi sup. n Tlpo<nroi'f)ffa<r8ai TOVS v6fj.ovs avrif

1 Diodor. Sic. Hist. lib. i. c. 94. 8i86i>ai irapa rots 'lovtiaiois Maxrfjf rbv

m Ou8e yap arepos \6yos %X l Tl $w- 'law firiKa\ovfj.evov 6e6v. Diodor. Sic.

AOJ/, bv ire pi AvKovpyov Kal NOV/JLU Kal ubi sup.
roiovriav a\\u>v avSpwv \eyovffiv, ws Deut. v. 2 4.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

the fireP, if they did not hear it; that he could, day after
day, and week after week, for about forty years together,
make them all believe that he gave them bread from heaven,
calling the heads of all their families every day to such a
particular method of gathering it, as must make them all
intimately acquainted with all the circumstances of it q , if
all the time he did not really give them bread from heaven,
but only pretended it ; to say that he could, in like manner,
once or twice upon an accident, but for the long space of
time above mentioned, for near forty years together, upon
every movement of the camp, make the whole people be-
lieve they saw a miraculous pillar of light directing their
marches, or abiding in a cloud of glory upon their taber-
nacle, when they were not to journey 1 " ; if all the while no
such thing was real, and Moses had only made some arti-
ficial beacon, of which the Israelites did not know the con-
trivance and composition 8 : to say these and other things
of a like nature, in order to insinuate the miracles that at-
tended the Israelites in the wilderness to be like the hea-
then wonders, pretended only, but not real, must be to say
the most incredible things in the world. If Moses had been
an impostor, he would never have attempted such miracles,
nor have been so hardy as to venture his artifices in so open
a light, and to daily examination for so many years together,
of so many hundreds of thousands of people ; or if he could
have been so romantic as to hazard the exposing them to so
many, such unlimited and repeated trials, he must have been
but a weak and rash man, and consequently come off many
times detected and defeated, unless we can think his Israel-
ites to have been a camp of the most careless and inconsi-

P Deut. iv. ii 16. to a camp of that bigness; but the

q Exod. xvi. camp of the Israelites consisted of

r Ch. xl. 34 38. many hundreds of thousands of peo-

s A beacon of this sort is said to pie, and must have extended itself

have been made and set up over the over many miles of the country,

royal tent in Alexander's army. Quint, whenever they pitched it : and what

Curtius in loc. supra citat. And as one artificial light could have been ei-

Alexander's forces were not at most ther formed or managed, consisting of

above 35000, (see Prideaux, Connect, a body of fire of a size sufficient to be

part i. b. vii.) it is conceivable that seen and recognized in every quarter

such a light might be an useful signal of so great a nation of people ?

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

derate people, blindly devoted to receive implicitly what-
ever he told them they saw, without opening their eyes,
or making any trial whether the things he told them were
so or no. But this cannot be pretended. For,

IV. If we look into the conduct of the Israelites, where
do we find them disposed to any implicit belief of Moses ?
Did they not rather examine every thing he offered in the
strictest manner, and endeavour indefatigably to oppose him
in every part of his administration? They were but three
days over the Red sea before they murmured against him
at Marah 1 ; and though they were here miraculously relieved
by him u , yet at Elim they appear to have had but little
expectation that he could lead them any further x . When
the manna was given, and the particular injunctions com-
municated for the method of gathering it, what disposition
do we find in the people either to believe what Moses had
told them, or to obey what he had directed ? They hearkened
not unto Moses ; but left of the manna until the morning, and it
bred worms, and stanky. And on the seventh day some of the
people went out to gather manna, but they found none 7 -. At
Rephidim, when they wanted water, they were ready to
stone him a ; and though at Sinai, the wonders that were
seen and heard there seemed at first to have made a deep
impression, yet it was not long before they were led away
by their own imaginations into idolatry b . They were
dissatisfied at Taberah, even though the miraculous direc-
tion of the cloud had led them thither ; and so mutinous at
Kibroth-hattaavah, that Moses found himself unequal to the
labour of bearing up against their oppositions, and begged to
have a number of persons to assist him in endeavouring to
promote amongst them a better temper d ; a work so far
from having a promising appearance, that two of the per-
sons nominated to it would fain have declined it, had they
not been encouraged by a miracle to undertake it e . When

* Exod. xv. 22, 24. b Exod. xix. xx. xxiv. xxxii. See

Ver. 25. book xi.

x Ch. xvi. 3. c Numb. xi. i.

y Ver. 20. d Ver. 14.

z Ver. 27. e Ver. 26.

a Ch. xvii. 4.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

the people came to Kadesh, and might have entered Ca-
naan, how averse were they to every thing that Moses
would have directed, though they had the most reasonable
application in the world made to them, to induce them to
hope for success in their undertaking f ! But afterwards,
when by a most obstinate opposition they had incurred the
divine displeasure, and were warned by Moses that their at'
tempt would surely fail, then nothing could prevent their
marching to a defeat from their enemies . In the rebellion
of Korah, two hundred and fifty princes of the congregation
were engaged h , and the defection was so obstinate, that
even the miraculous destruction of Korah and all his com-
pany could not quell it; but, on the morrow, the congre-
gation appeared in a new ferment, and accused Moses and
Aaron of having killed the Lord's people': fourteen thou-
sand were hereupon taken off by a pestilence before the camp
could be brought into any temper k , and another most sur-
prising miracle was wrought before they came to have a due
sense of their folly 1 . And now what opposition could the
most enterprising of our modern deists have made to Moses,
which his Israelites did not make to him ; or what measures
were omitted that could possibly have been taken to make
the utmost trial of his strength and authority in every part of
his administration? I might add to all this, that we never
find Moses to have had any considerable human confederacy
to abet and support him : in their turns all tribes and orders
of his people were hot in opposing him, and his nearest re-
lations, his brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, whenever
they thought they had a pretence for it, were as ready as
any others to withstand and condemn him m ; and were so
positive in their contradiction to him, that nothing less than
a miracle could silence them 11 . A considerable part of his
own tribe headed the fiercest mutiny that was ever raised
against him ; and can it be thought, after all these things,
that if Moses had depended upon artifice, and measures con-

f Numb. xiv. 7, 9. k Numb. xvi. 49.

g: Ch. xiv. l Ch. xvii. i ?o.

h Ch. xvi. m Ch. xii.

i Ver. 41. Ver. 10.

VOL. II. R

244 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

certed between him and some partisans, to impose upon the
people, some or other of these defections would not have
brought the secret into open light, and have exposed it to
the whole congregation ? But instead of this, throughout
all his administration, we see an evident series of the clearest
miracles most openly performed, to give him weight amongst
the people ; and whenever they either would not attend to
him, or conspired to oppose him, then the divine vengeance
appeared in support of him, and gave the congregation no
other choice but to obey, or be consumed with dying .

V. Will it be here remarked that Moses did not finish
the writing his books, nor order the reading them, until
the generation, with whom he had so much opposition,
were all in their graves ; that perhaps the children of these
men being upon the borders of the land of promise, when
Moses delivered his books to them, and, warm with hopes
of seeing at last an end of all their labours, might be willing
not to begin new contests to embarrass their affairs, but for
peace and quiet's sake even consent to let him give what ac-
count he would of what was past, though they might know
the substance of what he wrote not to have been transacted
in the manner recorded by him ? I answer ; If this were
true, should we not have found the Israelites, when Moses
was dead and gone, not over-fond of paying, and obliging
their posterity for ever to pay, a most sacred regard to all
that he had left in writing to be transmitted to them? The
account which Moses left of their journeyings in the wil-
derness, if it was not true in fact, was a most provoking libel
upon every family, except one or two of the whole people ;
for, how strongly does it represent to them, that their fathers
had all been a stubborn and a rebellious generation, a genera-
tion that would not set their hearts aright, nor have their
spirit stedfast with God?. At the first entrance upon forming
the Jewish polity, the name of every male of twenty years
old of the whole people was taken down after their families,
by the house of their fathers after their poll** : and this was

o Numb. xvii. 12, 13. Psalm Ixxviii. 8.

P Exod. xxxii. 21. Numb. xiv. 28, Q Numb. i. 2.
29. xx. i o. Deut. i. 35. ii. 14 16.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 245

again done almost forty years after in the plains of Moab,
when all the persons except four, whose names had been
taken in the former poll, were dead r ; so that Moses left them
a most clear account of whom every one of them was de-
scended : and the keeping and filling up their genealogies
was necessary in their polity for ascertaining to each family
and member of it the inheritance in the land that was sever-
ally to belong to them. And can we now think that, under
these circumstances, they should all agree to a man to have
Moses record with infamy the immediate father of almost
every one of them ; that, in after-ages, when their posterity
should look back unto him that begat them, they might be
told they were descended from one who had been a rebel
against their God, and was cut off for his iniquity? The
children of Korah were alive when Moses delivered his
books, for we have a line of this family continued down
from Korah and his son to the times of Solomon 8 ; and is it
to be imagined that this family could have suffered an ac-
count, so prodigious in all its circumstances, of the rebellion
and destruction of Korah and all his company, as that which
Moses has given 1 , to go down without contradiction to all
posterity, if they had not known the whole, and every cir-
cumstance of it, to have been undeniably true, and notorious
to the whole congregation? Men are, I might almost say,
born with sentiments of more honour and respect for those
of whom they are descended ; and it is not to be conceived
that a man of that excellent temper, which Moses was of u ,
should offer, or any nation of people receive and adhere to,
such an account of their ancestors as Moses gave the Israel-
ites, if the truth of what he recorded had not been unques-
tionably known and confirmed to all of them. When Ro-
mulus, the first king of the Romans, became ungracious to
his people, and probably fell a sacrifice to some secret con-
spiracy 35 ; though the unsettled state of their infant constitu-
tion was not thought strong enough to have the real senti-

r Numb. xxvi. a Vid. Liv. Hist. Dionys. Halicarn.

s i Chron. vi. 33 38. Antiq. Rom. lib. ii. c. 36. Plutarch, in

t Numb. xvi. Romul.

" Ch. xii. 3.

R 2

246 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

ments, which the senate had of him, laid open to the people,
but it was reputed good policy to have an honourable ac-
count of him go down to all posterity y : yet we do not find
that they took care to give an unalterable sanction to his in-
stitutions, or affected to have him thought the sole founder
of their polity and religion ; but rather, the more amiable
prince that succeeded him had the reputation of completing
what Romulus had attempted, and of giving a fulness and
perfection to every part of their constitution 2 . And some-
thing of this sort we should have found of Moses, if he had
died in any disrepute with his people. But instead hereof,
after he was gone, the Israelites abundantly testified of him,
that his successor was not equal to him a : and the generation,
to whom he had given his books, took the utmost care to
perform every part of what he had enjoined b . It was
known amongst their enemies, that his directions were the
rule of all their treaties ; and they themselves looked at
every event of their wars as a completion of what Moses
had foretold to them d : they fully ratified every thing he
had done 6 , paid the utmost deference to any private claims
founded upon any thing that he had said f : they made all
their settlements according to what he had prescribed?, and
observed of all their acquirements, that they had succeeded
in them according to all that he had recorded 11 , and they
warned their posterity, that if ever they departed from doing
all that was written in the book of his law, to turn aside there-
from to the right hand or to the left' 1 , that they would surely
fall under the displeasure of God, and have all the evils
come upon them which he had in such case pronounced
against them k . And thus there appears all possible evi-
dence that the men, to whom Moses delivered what he
wrote, were so far from having a disbelief or doubt of what

y Deum, Dea natum, Regem, Paren- b Josh. viii. 35.

temque urbis Romanse salvere universi c Ch. ix. 24.

Romulum jubent. Pacem precibus ex- d Ch. xi. 20.

poscunt, uti volens propitius suam sem- e Ch. xii. 6, 7- Ch. xiii.

per sospitet progeniem. Liv. lib. K c. f Ch. xiv. 5 15.

1 6. Ch. xx, xxi.

z Vid. Liv. Dionys. Halic. Plut. in h Ch. xxi. 44, 45. xxiii. 14, 15.

Numa. * Ch. xxiii. 6.

a Deut. xxxiv. 10. k Ver. 13 16.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 247

he had recorded, that they took a most abundant care to
have, as I might say, no part of it fall to the ground. We
do not find that in any one thing they added to it 1 , neither
did they diminish aught from it m , not even the disadvan-
tageous account he had given of their fathers ; as is evident
from the appeal of their prophets in succeeding ages to these
very facts recorded by him n .

But I might observe one thing further of Moses. He must
have wrote with a strict regard to truth indeed, when we do
not find in him a partiality even to his own character. When
the elder Cyrus was about to die, Xenophon represents him
to have suggested to his friends the circumstances that had
completed the happiness of his life : " I do not remember,"
says he, " that I have ever aimed at or attempted what I
" did not compass : I have seen my friends made happy by
" me, and I leave my country in the highest glory, which
" was heretofore of but little figure in Asia ." And how
natural is this sentiment ! What wise man would not wish
to close his day after this manner ? And is it not obvious
that Moses might with much truth have sent his life down
to posterity adorned with many hints of this nature ? For
how easy had it been for him to have observed to his people
to this purpose : " I was born amongst you when you were
" slaves in the land of Egypt : I brought you forth from the
" house of bondage : I have for forty years supported you
" in the great wilderness : I have preserved you in all the
" heats and intestine divisions we have unhappily had
" amongst us : I have at last entered you into a part of the
" country where you are to settle : I am now old, and can-
" not hope to be much longer with you ; but I think myself
" happy, and can now leave you with joy, having lived to
" shew you, by experience, that you have your settlement
" in your hands. You have seen already the success you
" may have against your enemies : go on in the way I
" have opened to you, and you shall soon triumph over the
" remainder of them." But, instead of any thing of this

1 Deut. iv. 2. xii. 32. Josh. i. 7. xx. 10 17.

m ibid. o Vid. Xenophon. Cyropsed. 1. viii.

n Psalm Ixxviii. xcv. 9, 10. Ezek. p. 649. Ed. Hutchin. Ox. 1728.

248 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

sort, Moses records of himself and Aaron, that the Lord had
said unto them, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in
the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring
this congregation into the land which I have given them?. He
repeats it to them that he had offended God^ turns their
eyes from himself to his successor 1 ", fully acquaints them
that not he but Joshua was to lead them into the land 8 ;
confessing at the same time that he had a most passionate
desire to conduct their conquests, but that God would not
hear him in this matter 1 . And thus Moses, though those
who came after him highly extolled him above any of his
successors 11 ; though, from the general character which God
had given of him x , he might certainly have covered his
dishonour in the one only circumstance there ever was to be
the cause of it ; though, surely, if any man ever had whereof
to glory, in the many revelations made to him, and the
mighty works that had been done by himy, he might be
thought to have had so more abundantly ; yet, from a most
sacred regard to truth, he was after all content to lay himself
down numbered with the transgressors. And now where in
all history can we find an instance of the like nature ? A wise
man would not indeed be so vain as to wish to have a lustre
given to his actions which they will not at all bear ; and yet
it is but natural for an honest man, if he is to be known to
those who are to come after him, to wish to be seen in the
best light; to desire to have the good that may be said of
him offered as much to his advantage as the cause of truth
can fairly admit of, and as much of what may be said to
his disadvantage not told as may be omitted of him. This
was the sentiment of the younger Pliny 2 , and unquestionably
Moses would not have treated his own character with a
greater rigour, if he had not made it the great point of his
work, to write with all truth a full account of the proceed-
ings of God's dispensations rather than his own history.

P Numb. xx. 12. u Ch. xxxiv. 10.

Q Ch. xxvii. 14. Deut. i. 37. xxxi. 2. x Numb. xii. 7.

r Deut. xxxi. 7. y Ver. 6 8. Deut. xxxiv. 10, n.

s Ver. 14, &c. z Vid. Plin. Epist.

* Deut. iii. 23 27.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 249

If Moses had not had the direction of an immediate re-
velation, I do not think he would have left the Israelites any
body of written laws ; at least he would never have thought
of tying them and their posterity in all ages, whatever
changes and chances might happen to their affairs, to so
minute and strict an observance of so various and extensive a
body of laws, without leaving them at any time a power to
add to them or diminish from them a . Lycurgus reformed
the Lacedemonian state, and he pretended himself to have
had the direction of Apollo b ; but he did not venture to
give his people a body of written laws for them to live by
without variation : if he had, the shortness and imperfec-
tion of human wisdom would unquestionably in a few ages
have appeared throughout any such code in many parti-
culars contained in it. And this Lycurgus seems to have
been well aware of; and therefore, in one of his Rhetrte, re-
commended it to his people not to tie themselves down to
written laws at all d . He thought the affairs of all states
subject to such a variety of contingencies, that what could
be appointed at one time might be very improper at an
other ; and that therefore a civil polity would be more stable
that was founded only upon general maxims, with a liberty
to direct particulars as occasion should require, than where
a set of laws are composed to be inviolably maintained, mi-
nutely to prescribe and limit the incidents of political life 6 .
We read of Numa, that, whilst he lived, he instructed the
Pontifices in all the rites and appointments of his religion ;
but he was not willing to leave the twelve volumes he had
written to the perusal or for the direction of posterity, but
ordered his sacred books to be buried with him f . Some
ages after, the place where they had been buried was acci-
dentally broken up, and the books taken out of the stone-
chest in which they had been reposited, and Petilius, the
then praBtor, was appointed to peruse them : but he found
them so far from being likely to be of service to the public,

a Deut. iv. 2. d Plutarch, in Lycurg. p. 47.

b Diodor. Sic. Hist. lib. i. p. 59. e Id. ibid.

c Nt^uovs Se yfypa/jL/uLcvovs 6 AvKovpyos * Id. in Numa, p. 74'
OVK eO-r)Ket>. Plutarch, in Lycurg. p. 47.

250 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

that he made oath to the senate, that the contents of
them ought not to be divulged; whereupon a public order
passed to have them burneds. Philo the Jew remarks,
that in all other nations, time and accidents had made
many alterations of their laws absolutely necessary ; that
the Jewish law was the only one on earth that was
not grown obsolete in any of its branches 11 . The Medes
and Persians indeed affected to have the compliment,
which they paid their kings 1 , thought to be a real perfec-
tion of their laws, that they were to live for ever* ; but their
kings, we find, had a power to make decrees that might 1
defeat the effect which laws, that altered not and could not be
changed, might have been attended with, whenever an effect
not approved of would have been the consequence of any
of them. Human foresight cannot at once calculate and
provide for all the changes and chances that must happen in
a course of ages to the affairs of a people : and Moses must
have been a weak man, too weak to be the author of the
laws he has given us, if he did not know enough of human
life to cause him to consider, that how well soever he might
estimate the then state and views of his people, yet he could
never be sure but that something very different from what
he might form for them might in time be very proper to
become their constitution, in order to attain the political
prospects which might arise to them. But known unto God
are all his purposes, from the beginning of the world m ; and he
can secure them a full effect, as he pleases, even to the end
of it : and if it was indeed the purpose of God to choose, as
Moses represents, the house of Jacob to be unto himself a
peculiar people" , and to give them a law, by a punctual ob-

g Plutarch, in Numa, p. 74. )8e'/3am, cureSAeura, d-pa8ai/Ta,

h Tcb fjLev TUV &\\(av v6[u/j.a, ct ns <r<ppayi(ri (pixrews avTrjs ff(T7j/jia(T/j.fva t

fairi rf \oyur/Mp, 8iet /j.vpias trpo<pdffeis fj.(Vfi irayius a.<p' ?is fifj.pas typdtpi) /*-

evpfaei KKi*Tj/*Vn, iro\/M)is, % rvpav- xpl """ Philo de Vita Mosis, lib. i.

vlffiv, % riffiv &\\ois affov\^Tois, & ve<a- i Dan. ii. 4. iii. 9.

Tcpt<r/iy TU%IJS KaraffKifirrei' woAAetaty k Dan. vi. 8. 15. Esther i. 19.

5e /cot rpv(p)j ir\eovd<raffa xpny' iais K{ d l See Esther viii. 8. Prideaux, Con-

n-fpiovtriais aQOdvois, Ka0e2\ v6/j.ovs, TO, nect. part i. b. v. ad an. 453.

\lav ayaOa rcov iro\\S>v fyeptw ov Svva- m Acts xv. 1 8.

Htv(i)v, a.\.\a$ia.K6povQv&pi6vTa>v vfipis n Exod. xix. 5. Deut. vii. 6. xiv.

y avriiraKov v6fiif ra 8e rovrov p.6vov 2. xxvi. 18.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 251

servance of which they were to be kept, shut up unto the faith
which should afterwards be revealed ; we may hence open a
view of things that will fully account for Moses, under the
immediate direction of a revelation from God, appointing
to the Israelites all his institutions, and charging them not
to turn therefrom, until the fulness of time was come p , to the
right hand or to the left^.

Some writers inform us that Moses was the first that ever
gave written laws to a people 1 ", and I do not find any thing
valid to contradict this opinion ; though the abettors of it
have made mistakes in their attempts to support it. Justin
Martyr cites Diodorus Siculus in favour of it s ; but Diodo-
rus evidently speaks not of Moses, but of Mneves an Egyp-
tian*; for Moses is afterwards mentioned by Diodorus in
the same passage, and with such different circumstances, as
abundantly shew Diodorus to have thought Mneves and
Moses not to be one and the same person". The learned
editor of Diodorus Siculus thinks the word aypdvTois in the
text should be corrected fyypdtyois : the passage, he says, is so
worded in Justin Martyr's citation of it x . If this were the
true text of Diodorus, we might gather from him, that
Mneves taught his people to live by written laws? ; and this
would hint such laws to have been in use centuries before
the times of Moses: for Mneves can be no other than
Menes, who was Moses's Mizraim, the first planter of
Egypt 2 . Mneves lived in the age next after the gods and
heroes a , and this was the time of Menes, or Mizraim 's
life b . Mneves had his laws from Hermes or Mercury 6 ; and

Galat. iii. 23. Q Diodorus says of Mneves, Tbv

P Deut. xviii. 1518. John i. 45. MvctV irfo<nrovi]9r\vo.i avrf rbv 'Ep^v

Acts iii. 22 24. Gal. iv. 4. SeSewf ej/ot roiirovs, i. e. V<$/JLOVS. Of Moses

q Deut. v. 32. xxviii. 14. Josh. i. he says afterwards, Uapa Sf rois 'lou-

7> 8. Saiots Mct><rf)v [fly>o<nroi^(ra<r0ai rovs v6-

* Joseph, cont. Ap. 1. ii. c. 15. novsavTf5i$6vai]Tbv'lautiriKa\ovfjivoif

s In Protreptic. p. 10. ed. Par. 1615. Qf6v. Diodor. ubi sup.

t The same passage is cited by St. x Vid. Rhodoman. conjectur. in loc.

Cyril, contr. Julian. 1. i. Both Cyril V Ufiffai Qnal irpooTov tyypdfois v6fMis

and Justin Martyr cite Diodorus thus : xP^ <Ta<T ^ at r - "f^h^ T

MeavffTfv &v$pa Kal rrj tyvxfj fjicyav, &c. z See vol. i. b. iv.

But Diodorus's words are: Mvevrjv &v$pa a Diodor. ubi sup.

KCU rrj fyvxr) fj.fyav. Vid. Diodor. Hist. b See vol. i. b. i.

1. i. c. 94. c Diodor. ubi sup.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

Hermes or Mercury was the surname of Thoth or Thyoth,
who was secretary to Mizraim or Menes d . In short, Mneves
or Menes may reasonably be thought to be the same name,
with only a little difference in writing it. And if we allow
this, and take Diodorus to suggest that Mneves taught his
people to use written laws ; since Menes or Mizraim planted
Egypt about A. M. 1772 e , we shall make written laws to
have been in use in Egypt about seven hundred years before
the times of Moses. But had they been so, we should un-
questionably have found the Greeks forming their states
with written laws much earlier than the times when they
appear to have had their first notion of them; for the arts
and sciences of Egypt found a way into Greece very early f;
and yet the inhabitants of this country seem to have had
no knowledge of written laws, until after Homer's time ;
for, as Josephus has remarked, we find no word in all his
poems that signifies a written law, the word VO/JLOS having a
different sense, wherever it is used by him 8. A due con-
sideration of these points must suggest to us, i. that both
Cyril and Justin Martyr mistook the true meaning of Dio-
dorus in the passage they cite from him : they suppose him
to be speaking of Moses; but he was mentioning another
person, the first planter and king of Egypt; accordingly,
to accommodate his words to what they thought his inten-
tion, they interpolated his text, where he wrote Mz>ew7J>,
Mneves, they wrote Moxnyy, Moses; and having made this
emendation, Moses's law, being a written law, forced upon
them another ; and induced them, where he used the word
aypa-nroi?, unwritten, to imagine he meant eyypa^ots, or written,
and to cite him, not as he really wrote, but as they falsely
judged him to have intended. Whereas, 2. Diodorus really
meant to remark, that Mneves was the first person that taught
the Egyptians the use of laws ; but they were VOIJLOI aypairroi,
unwritten laws. The early kings instructed their people by
verbal edicts ; and Diodorus, in the passage cited, intimates

d See vol. i. b. iv. e Joseph, cont. Apion. 1. ii. c. 15.

e Ibid. Jos. Barnes in v. 20. Hymn, ad Apol-

f Ibid, and vol. ii. b. viii. lin.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

this most ancient Egyptian legislator to have formed his people
in this manner, before the use of written laws was introduced
into the world ; and he imagines him to have feigned Mercury
or Hermes to have given him h what he spake to them, in or-
der to his words having weight amongst his people 1 , that they
might think a divine sentence to be in the lips of their king k ,
and that his mouth transgressed not in the judgments which he
delivered to them.

There are some particulars commanded in the law of
Moses, which it is evident that Moses, at the time when
he enjoined them, knew might be fatal to the welfare of
his people, if God did not interpose, and by an especial
providence preserve them from what the obeying such com-
mands tended evidently to bring upon them. Of this sort
is the law he gave them for all their males to appear three
times in a year before the Lord 1 ; and the command not to
sow or till any of their lands, or dress their vineyards, or
gather any fruit of them every seventh year m : and if, as
some of the learned calculate, the year of Jubilee was a dif-
ferent year from the seventh sabbatical year", then after

5' avrtp rbv 'Ep/j.r)v subject. The most learned dean Pri-

SeSw/ceVcu TOVTOVS. The word SeSou/ceVcu deaux thought the text, Levit. xxv. 8

here signifies to dictate to the mind 12. to be in favour of the Jubilee

what is to be spoken, as in Mark xiii. year's being the next to the forty-ninth

n. or seventh sabbatical year. Preface to

i Tlpbs r)]v inrepox^v Kal 8vva.fj.iv rS>v vol. i. of his Connect. The words of

fvpflv \yo/j.vcav rovs v6fj.ovs aTrofi\fyav- the text are, Thou shall number seven

TO. rbv ox^-ov fj.a\\ov viraKovfftaQai Sia- sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times

\aft6vTas. Diodor. ubi sup. seven years ; and the space of the seven

k Prov. xvi. 10. sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty

1 Exod. xxiii. 17. xxxiv. 23. and nine years. Then shall thou cause

m lbid. xxiii. 10, n. Levit. xxv. the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on

3 7. the tenth day of the seventh month in the

n The learned have been much di- day of atonement. And ye shall hallow

vided about the year of Jubilee, whe- the fiftieth year a Jubilee shall that

ther it was to be kept in the forty- fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow,

ninth year, which, taken inclusively, neither reap that which groweth of itself

may be called the fiftieth; or whether in it. Levit. xxv. 8 n. We may

forty-nine years were to run out, and perhaps come at the true meaning of

then the next, or fiftieth year, was to this text, if we take it, i . to direct the

be the year of Jubilee. Vid. Cleric. Israelites to observe, at their due inter-

Comment. in Levit. xxv. Petav. Ra- vals, seven sabbatical years. 2. To re-

tionar. Tempor. lib. ix. c. 29, &c. And mark that a course of seven such years,

we have so few, and such imperfect with the six years of tillage belonging

accounts of the practice of the Jews, to each of them, duly observed, were

in their observance of this or their sab- to make up the full amount of forty -

batical years, that it may be difficult nine years ; the space of the seven sab-

to offer any thing certain upon this baths of 'years shall be unto thee forty and

254

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

seven times seven years, on every fiftieth year, they were
to have their lands and vineyards lie undressed and unculti-
vated two years together . The first of these laws obliged
them to leave their cities and habitations exposed and with-
out defence to any invaders, who might at such times make
incursions upon them ; for, at these three times in every
year, all their males were to come up from all parts of the
country into the place where the tabernacle was fixed before
the temple was built P, and afterwards to the temple at Je-
rusalem. The second must, ordinarily speaking, have brought
upon them many inconveniences, as it required them to lose
at once a whole years produce of all their country : and if
the Jubilee year was to be kept, as is above hinted, and
they were not to sow nor reap in the fiftieth year, when the
year immediately foregoing had been a sabbath year, this,

nine years ; or, to render the Hebrew
text verbatim, the days of the seven
sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty
and nine years. The meaning of which
remark will appear, if we allow the
text, 3. to suggest to them, that they
were to begin the Jubilee year on the
tenth day of the seventh month of
the forty-ninth, or seventh sabbatical
year; thou shalt cause the trumpet of the
Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the
seventh month. The observance of each
sabbatical year was, I imagine, to be-
gin as soon as the sixth year's crop
could be got off the ground in the be-
ginning of the seventh year; for the
harvest in Canaan fell in the first
month. [See and compare Josh. iii.
15. with i Chron. xii. 15.] And when
the Israelites had counted the seven
times seven years, so as to be in ob-
servance of their seventh sabbath year,
then on the tenth day of the seventh
month they were to begin a year of
Jubilee, only remembering, that they
were not to reckon the sabbath year
they were then keeping to end upon
commencing the Jubilee; for the se-
ven sabbaths of years were to contain
the days of forty-nine years, which
they would not have amounted to, if
the seventh sabbath year was to have
been thought finished on the tenth
day of the seventh month, upon be-
ginning the Jubilee. 4. As, according

to this account, the year of Jubilee did
not begin and end with the sabbatical
year, but commenced some months
later, and extended a like space of time
longer; so it was evidently not any
one of the years contained in the se-
ven sabbaths of years, though it was
in part concurrent with the last of
them : and accordingly it is properly
styled in the text a fiftieth year, as not
being any one of the forty-nine before
mentioned. If what has been offered
may be admitted, then, 5. though the
Jubilee year began and ended some
months later than a sabbatical year,
yet, as the season for seedtime did not
come on in Canaan before the fif-
teenth day of the seventh month was
over, [see Levit. xxiii. 39.] the Jubi-
lee year ending, as it began, on the
tenth day of this seventh month, did
not command a year's neglect of har-
vest and tillage, other than what the
sabbath year in part concurrent with
it enjoined : only perhaps the year of
Jubilee obliged them to defer pre-
paring their lands some months longer
than a sabbatical year, not attended
with a Jubilee, required; causing them
hereby to end every forty-ninth or
seventh sabbatical year, with, as I
might say, a greater solemnity.

Levit. xxv "8 12.

P Deut. xvi. i Sam. i. 3.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 255

one would think, must have distressed them with the extre-
mities of a famine 9. Moses had a full sense that all these
evils might attend the observance of these laws : he was
well apprised that, as Canaan was an inland country, and
his Israelites were to be surrounded with, and open to, many
foreign nations, it could never be thought agreeable to good
policy, three times a year to draw all the males from the
frontiers of the land ; for what would this be less, than to
give every enemy they had so many remarkable and well
known opportunities to enter their coasts without fear of
resistance, and to plunder or take possession of them as they
pleased ? And can it be conceived that any state or kingdom
could be long flourishing that should be bound by law to
expose itself in this manner ? But against these fears Moses
assured his people that God would protect them. He sets
before them God's promise : / will cast out the nations before
thee, and enlarge thy borders : neither shall any man desire thy
land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the Lord thy God
thrice in the year* ; so that, in obeying this command, the
Israelites were three times a year to expose themselves, con-
trary to all rules of good policy, in confidence of a marvel-
lous protection of God, who had promised to prevent any
enemies taking advantage of their so doing. In like man-
ner Moses answers the objection to be made to the observ-
ing the law for the seventh or sabbatical year : If ye shall
say, [says he to them in the name and words of God,] What
shall we eat the seventh year ? behold, we shall not sow, nor
gather in our increase : then I will command my blessing upon
you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three
years 5 . A most extraordinary produce was promised all over

q We find a sore famine in Samaria, fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
in Elijah's time, from unseasonable The promise meant, not that the sixth
weather, for three years together, year's produce should last the term
i Kings xvii. xviii. of three complete years j but that it
r Exod. xxxiv. 24. should suffice for the seventh year,
s The meaning of the expression, for the eighth year, and for a part of
for three years, is explained by what the ninth year, namely, until the bar-
follows, Levit. xxv. 22. And ye shall vest, in the beginning of the ninth
sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old year, should bring in the fruits of the
fruit until the ninth year ; until her eighth year's tillage.

256 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

the land, at all times, the year before they were to begin
their neglect of harvest and tillage. And now can any one
imagine that Moses could ever have thought of obliging
the Israelites to such laws as these, if God had not really
given a particular command about them ? or would the
Israelites have been so weak as to obey such pernicious in-
junctions, if they had not had a sufficient evidence that the
commands were of God, and that he would indeed protect
them in their observance of them ? or had they been so roman-
tic as to have gone into an obedience to keep such institu-
tions as these, if they had not been of God, and without an
especial providence to protect and preserve them from the con-
sequences that would naturally arise from them ; would not
a few years trial have brought home to them a dear-bought
experience of so great a folly ? Their enemies would unques-
tionably have many times made advantage of the opportu-
nities they gave them to enter their country ; and a sixth
year's crop, no better than ordinary, must have perpetually
convinced them that the observance of the sabbatical year
was a mere idle fancy, not supported by such a blessing from
God as they had been told was annexed to it. The Israel-
ites fell indeed into a great neglect of observing their sabba-
tical years some centuries before their captivity*; but it is
remarkable, that they thought themselves to have had so
little colour for this breach of their duty, from any failure
of God's promise to them, that they looked upon the num-
ber of years which their land was to be desolate, when they
were carried to Babylon, to be a particular judgment upon
them, designed by God to answer to the number of the
sabbatical years which had not been observed by them u .
After the captivity, the Jews were more observant of this
injunction ; we find them keeping their sabbath years in
the times of Alexander the Great; for, upon account of
their not tilling their lands in those years, they petitioned
him for a remission of every seventh year's tribute x . As to

t Prideaux's Preface to Connection, Thus they kept their sabbatical years

part i. in the times of the Maccabees, i Mac.

u 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21. vi. 49, 53.
x Joseph. Antiq. lib. xi. c. 8. . 6.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 257

the command for appearing three times in the year before
the Lord, we find it practised by the Jews to their very latest
times. When Cestius the Roman came against Lydda, he
found no men in the city, for they were all gone to Jerusa-
lem to the feast of tabernacles y ; and afterwards, when Titus
laid siege to Jerusalem, he shut up in it, as it were, the
whole Jewish nation ; for they were then assembled there to
keep the feast of unleavened bread z . Josephus indeed re-
marks, that the keeping this feast at the time of Titus's
coming to besiege Jerusalem greatly conduced to the con-
cluding the fate of his country 8 . But we are to observe, that
this did not happen until after our Saviour's times ; until
the Jews were given up by God, and their city and polity
were to be trodden down of the Gentiles 13 .

Upon the death of Moses, A. M. 2554, at the beginning
of the year, Joshua took the command of the Israelites ; and
when the days of mourning for Moses were over, he pre-
pared, according to directions which God had given him, to
remove the camp, and to enter Canaan c . But before he be-
gan to march, he sent two spies to Jericho, a city over
against the camp, on the other side the river Jordan d : the
spies, when they came to Jericho, went to the house of a
woman named Rahab, and lodged there 6 : she concealed
them from the search which the king of Jericho made for
them, and after three days they came back to Joshua, and
reported to him what terror the inhabitants of Canaan were
in upon account of the Israelites f . The behaviour of Rahab
to the spies was indeed extraordinary, and cannot but at first
sight appear liable to objections ; for upon what principle
could she receive into her house the known enemies of her
country, conceal them from the searchers, and dismiss them
in safety, contrary to her duty to the public, and allegiance
to the king of Jericho ? We are told, that she professed her-

y Joseph, de bello Judaic, lib. ii. c Josh. i.
c. 19. . i. d Ch. ii. i. Numb. xxii.

z Ibid. lib. vi. c. 19. . 2. e Josh. ii. i.

a Ibid. f Ver. 224.

b Luke xxi. 24.

258 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

self to know, that the God of the Israelites was God in heaven
above, and in earth beneath** , and that the Lord had given
them the land 11 : but we are not informed by the writer of
the book of Joshua, whether she collected these things only
from having heard, what she mentioned to the spies, how
the waters of the Red sea were dried up, and the kings of
the Amorites on the other side of Jordan were conquered
and destroyed 1 ; or whether God had been pleased to give
her any special direction to entertain the spies, in obeying
which she was to save her family from ruin. However, the
book of Joshua is but a short account of what the Israel-
ites did, and of what happened to them whilst they were
under the command of their leader of that name ; and we
may imagine, that many circumstances attending some facts
recorded in it were perhaps registered by some other hands,
and afterwards related more at large in other books that
are now lost k . The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
says of Rahab, that by faith she perished not with them that
believed not, when she had received the spies with peace 1 : and
if we compare what she did with the actions of other per-
sons mentioned with her by the sacred writer, as influenced
by a like faith, we must judge of her, that she had received
some command from God, and that she acted in obedience
to it. By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen
as yet, moved withfear, prepared an ark to the saving of his
house n : he received an express revelation that the world
was to perish by water, and was instructed by God how he
might save himself and family ; he believed what God re-
vealed to him, made an ark in obedience to the orders that
were given him, and by thus believing, and acting accord-
ing to his belief, he saved himself and family from perishing.
In like manner Rahab undoubtedly was informed by some
revelation of God's will, and acted in obedience to it, or she
could not have been an instance of the faith which the in-

g Josh. ii. 1 1. l Heb. xi. 31.

h Ver. 9. m Ver. 7. The word i

i Ver. 10. n Ibid.

* Ch. x. 13. o Gen. vi. 13, 14, &c.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 259

spired writer treats of in the chapter where she is men-
tioned. Had she proceeded upon a general report, or had
she inquired and been assured, upon the best information,
that the people, who were about invading the country she
belonged to, had been wonderfully raised up and preserved
by the miraculous power of God, and that they were likely
to conquer and destroy all that would not submit to them,
and been hence induced to think, that it would be prudent
for her to ingratiate herself with them, if possibly she might
thereby save herself and family from ruin ; all this, I think,
would not have justified her conduct ; but her concealing the
spies upon these motives would have been a treachery to
her country, and might at last have proved a vain as well as
wicked action ; for unless she certainly knew that God de-
signed to give the Israelites possession of Jericho, his having
hitherto protected them could be no argument that they
would be enabled to destroy every city which they might
have a mind to attack and depopulate. But if the design of
God towards the inhabitants of Canaan had been made
known to the king and people of Jericho, and he and they
had been sufficiently warned to save themselves from the
destruction that was coming upon them ; if they would not
obey, but, upon their refusal, if Rahab believed, and obe-
diently acted according to what was required of her, her whole
behaviour will stand clear of every imputation. And this
appears to me to have been her case : Rahab perished not with
them that believed not p ; the Greek words are, not rots dmorotj,
with the unbelievers, but rots a7rei0?jo-a(n, that is, with them who
were disobedient <\. But how can the inhabitants of Jericho
be said to have been disobedient, if God had required
nothing of them? Some sufficient information both they
and Rahab must particularly have had, or they could not
have been condemned as disobedient, refusing to obey what
they were directed to ; nor could she have been an instance
of one who was saved by her faith, i. e. by believing and
acting according to the will of God made known to her.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews suggests nothing

P Heb. ubi sup. <1 i Pet. iii. 20.

VOL. II. S

260 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

that contradicts any fact recorded in Joshua ; but by the
mention he makes of Rahab's case, it is evident that there
were some circumstances attending it, which in Joshua are
not recounted. Admit these circumstances, and her beha-
viour is clear of every appearance of a crime ; nay, it is just
and commendable : and the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews needed not to have made Rahab an instance of the
faith he was treating of, if he had not sufficient grounds for
what he intimates about her ; especially when he had so
many illustrious patterns in his mind, as not to have room
particularly to treat of many of them r . And thus, after all,
what our modern reasoners think they have to insinuate
against Rahab, as guilty of a treachery to her country, is
but an unjust accusation, founded upon a partial view of
the circumstances attending what she did, and the motives
she had to do it.

The day after the return of the spies from Jericho, early
in the morning Joshua removed the camp to the banks of
Jordan 8 : here they halted for three days 1 . After the three
days, the proper officers instructed the people for their pass-
ing the river, according to the directions which God had
given u ; and on the next day the waters of Jordan were
miraculously divided ; so that the Israelites marched through
the channel on dry ground x . They were near a whole day
in their march through the river, and they made their pas-
sage through the river on the tenth day of the first month of
the year7 ; and it is easy to adjust the particular transactions,
mentioned from the beginning of the month unto this tenth
day, to the several days they belong to. On the first day of
the month Joshua sent the spies to Jericho: the king of
Jericho ordered the search for them the very night they
came thither 2 : Rahab, before they went to sleep, conferred
with them, and let them down out of the city from the win-
dow of her house a : they hid themselves in the mountain for
three days b , and therefore came to Joshua on the evening

r Heb. xi. 32. y Josh. iv. 19.

s Josh. iii. i. z Josh. ii. 2.

t Ver. 2. a Ver. S.

u Ver. 3, &c. b Ver. 22.
xVer. 1 6, &c.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 261

of the fourth day : on the fifth day of the month the camp
removed from Shittim to Jordan : after three days, or on
the ninth day, the officers went through the host d to instruct
the people for their going over the river ; and on the mor-
row they were to see the wonders which the Lord designed
to 1 do among them 6 , and accordingly, on the tenth day of
the month, the waters were divided, and they passed over
Jordan.

When all the people were clean passed over Jordan, God
commanded Joshua to send twelve men, one out of each
tribe, back to the place where the priests, that bare the ark,
stood in the midst of the river f , and to order them each man
to take upon his shoulder a stone out of the river, and bring
it on shore with him&; and on the next day Joshua pitched
these stones in Gilgal for a monument 11 , to perpetuate to
future generations a remembrance of the waters of Jordan
being miraculously divided for the Israelites' marching
through the river into Canaan'. The ninth verse of this
chapter seems to intimate, that, besides the twelve stones
that were pitched in Gilgal, Joshua set up also twelve other
stones in the midst of the river : the LXX. k and the Chaldee
Paraphrast took the text in this sense 1 ; but the Syriac m and
Arabic translators" thought otherwise, and Josephus seems
to have had no notion of any more than one monument set
up on this occasion . We read of no command to Joshua
to erect any in the midst of the river : and, if he really de-
signed any thing of this nature, what would twelve stones,
no bigger than such as a man could carry, have signified,
if they had been laid upon one another in the channel ?
When the waters of Jordan returned to their place, and flowed
over all his banks, as they did before?, such a monument would

c Josh. iii. i. 1 Vid. Targ. Jonathan, in loc.

d Ver. 2. m Lapides, inquam, duodecim erex-

e Ver. 5. erunt, quos tulerunt e medio Jordanis

f Ch. iv. i 3. desub pedibus sacerdotum. Versio Sy-

e Ver. 5. riac. in loc.

h Ver. 8, 20. n The Arabic Version leaves out the

i Ver. 7, 21 24. ninth verse.

fc v E(TTTj<T6 5e 'Irjaovs nal &\\ovs 56- Vid. Joseph. Antiq. Jud. lib. v. c.

StKa \l6ovs 4v avr$ r$ 'lopSdvrj, &c. I. .4.

Versio LXX. Grsec. P Josh. iv. 18.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [fiOOK XIT.

have been washed away by them. The Hebrew words do
indeed imply, that Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of
Jordan, in the place where the feet of the priests, which bare
the ark of the covenant, stood<\. But I would submit it to the
judgment of the learned, whether a small mistake of ancient
copyists may not be supposed to have happened in this pas-
sage. plTF pirn, oe tok ha Jarden, does indeed signify in the
midst of Jordan: but if the text was originally written, not
p1]"Q, be tok, but plJlft, mittok, the place will have quite a
contrary meaning. The mistake of one single letter, the
writing 1 instead of ft before the word p^Jl, tok, might hap-
pen, and escape the correction of transcribers ; and if we
make this little emendation, the verse will run thus : And
Joshua set up twelve stones from out of the midst of Jordan, from
under the station of the feet of the priests, who carried the ark* ;
and hints only, what is repeated more fully towards the close
of the chapter, that Joshua set up in Gilgal those twelve
stones which were taken up out of Jordan. As to the words
which end this ninth verse, and they are there unto this day,
these were originally no part of the text of Joshua, but rather
a remark made in a later age in a MS. of this book : we find
several of these in the sacred pages 5 , which, having not been
duly kept distinct, are handed down to us as if they were
indeed part of the text in the places where they are added.

Some modern writers mention the river Jordan as a
stream of no very considerable breadth or depth, and, from
their notion of it, it may be thought that a miracle could
not be much wanted to enable the Israelites to get over it.
Sandys [says, that it is " not navigably deep, nor above eight
" fathoms broad, nor (except by accident) heady 1 ." But I
would observe, i. that the sacred books do constantly re-
present this river as not fordable, except at some particular

<1 The Hebrew words of the text are, having made the mistake above men-

pini ywirp n>pn naa m$ n*nn tioned, to have here dropped this letter.

'Nizn C':mn ''731 ISO nnn pvrr s See Prideaux's Connect, vol. i.

.nnnnp-iN book v.

r If the learned reader thinks the t Sandys's Travels, b. iii. p. 141. ed.

prefix o necessary before the word nnn, Lond. 1621.
we may reasonably suppose the copyist,

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 263

places, made probably by art, that the countries on each side
the water might have a communication. Thus the spies,
who were sent by Joshua to Jericho, when they were pur-
sued by the searchers, are not represented to have found any
way to return to the camp but by the fords of Jordan . In
like manner, when Ehud and the Israelites had taken the
fords of Jordan, not a man of the Moabites could pass the
river x . And thus the Gileadites entrapped the Ephraimites :
they took the passages of Jordan, and then the fugitives of
Ephraim, having no way to get over the river, fell into their
hands 7. Elijah passed over Jordan with Elisha, near unto
the place where the Israelites entered Canaan 2 , and Elisha
repassed it when Elijah was taken from him; but a miracle
was wrought by both of them, in order to their getting
over a ; which undoubtedly neither would they have at-
tempted, nor would God have enabled them to perform, if
they could have passed over in that place without it. But,

2. we have modern testimonies sufficient to refute any one
that should imagine the river Jordan to have been an incon-
siderable stream, easily forded in any part of it. Sandys
took his view of it at a place where, in length of time, the
channel was landed up, and the flow of water nothing so
great as it had been in former ages b . Thevenot went to or
near the place where the Israelites passed over it, and de-
scribes it to be " deep, half as broad as the Seine at Paris,
" and very rapid ;" and, according to Maundrell, the river
is hereabouts " twenty yards over within its channel, deeper
" than a man's height, and runs with a current, that there
" is no swimming against it d ." But whatever be the now
state of the river Jordan, how obvious is it to observe,

3. that all the parts of our globe are liable to great alter-
ations ; and the course of rivers admit of many changes in
the revolutions of ages. Jordan was a much larger river
than it now is, when the Israelites came into Canaan : in

u Josh. ii. 2. b Sandys's Travels, p. 197.

x Judg. iii. 28. c Thevenot's Travels, p. 193. ed.

y Ch. xii. 5. Lond. 1687.

z 2 Kings ii. 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 15. <i Journey from Aleppo, p. 83. ed,

a Ibid. Oxon. 1707.

|| CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

Pliny's time it filled a larger channel than it now runs in e ;
and, when Strabo wrote, vessels of burden were navigated
in it f . But, 4. Jordan overflow eth all his banks all the time
of harvests; and the time of harvest was in this first month,
when the Israelites entered Canaan h . Maundrell observes,
that, upon this flow of Jordan, the waters had anciently
covered a large strand, and washed up to an outer bank,
about a furlong from the common channel >. At this time
there could be no passing it, and therefore the Israelites
being now able to get over was very extraordinary; and it
is no wonder, that when the kings of the Amorites on the
west side of Jordan, and all the kings of the Canaanites by
the sea, heard how the waters were dried up from before
the children of Israel, their heart melted, and there was no
spirit in them k : because, whatever might have been at-
tempted when the river ran in its ordinary channel, the
passage of the Israelites was at the time of a known and
annual flood, when the waters flowed to a great height, and
an attempt to get over them was, naturally speaking, im-
possible.

After the Israelites were over the river, Joshua encamped
at Gilgal on the east side of Jericho, and here God directed
him to revive the rite of circumcision 1 ; for the Israelites
had circumcised none of their children that were born after
the exit out of Egypt until this time m . What occasioned
this neglect is not said expressly, but it is easy to guess it.
The covenant which the Israelites made with God in Horeb
was to do and observe all the things which the Lord should
command them" ; and they were to be strictly careful not to
make any thing a rite of their religion which the Lord
commanded them not : and therefore, though God had or-
dered Abraham to circumcise himself and children, and to

c Amnis, quatenus patitur locorum i Maundrell' s Journey from Aleppo,

situs, ambitiosus. Plin. Nat. Hist. 1. v. ubi sup.

c. 19. k Josh. v. i.

f Vid. Strab. Geog. 1. xvi. p. 755. ed. l Ver. 2.

Par. 1620. m Ver. 5, 7.

Josh. iii. 15. i Chron. xii. 15. EC- n Exod. xix. 8. xxiv. 3, 7. Deut. v.

clus. xxiv. 26. 27. xxvi. 17.

h See i Chron. xii. 15. See book xi.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 265

enjoin his posterity to use this rite ; yet, when God was
giving the Israelites a new law, in the manner which he
now did by the hand of Moses, I imagine they could not
warrantably take any rite, how ancient or usual soever, as
part of it, unless God himself gave them a command for it.
God indeed had given them a command for circumcision :
we find it amongst the laws given after the death of P Nadab
and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who were killed by fire
from the Lord, for offering incense in a manner which he
commanded them not^ ; an incident that could not but ad-
monish the whole camp to be careful to obey God's voice
indeed, and not to mingle their own fancies in the perform-
ance of any of his institutions : and the vengeance that had
so lately fallen upon the two sons of Aaron seems to have
given them a due caution in this matter. Though the pass-
over was a feast which they were commanded to keep to
the Lord throughout their generations, by an ordinance for
ever r ; yet we see they did not attempt their second cele-
bration of it without an express command from God for
it 8 ; nor venture to proceed in a case of doubt, which arose
about the men who were defiled by the dead body of a
man, but stood still until Moses heard what the Lord would
command concerning them*. In like manner as the law for
circumcision required the males to be circumcised at eight
days old", and was not given until within the second year
of the exit, when there must have been in the camp great
numbers of children uncircumcised, who were past the day
of age, at which this rite was appointed to be performed ;
there could not but arise great matter of doubt, when or
how these were to be put under the law : and the Israelites
not receiving directions from God how to proceed herein
was, I should think, the reason that they stood still in this
matter. The critics and annotators abound in assigning
reasons for the omission of circumcision, in which the Israel-
ites had lived hitherto x ; but I think they are not happy in

P Levit. xii. 3. t Numb. ix. 68.

1 Ch. x. i. u Levit. xii. 3.

r Exod. xii. 14. x Vid. Pool. Synops. Critic, in loc.

8 Numb. ix. i 3.

266 CONNECTION OF THE SACEED [BOOK XII.

assigning the true one. We find no fault imputed to the
Israelites for their neglect of it, and it was God that now
rolled away the reproach of Egypt from o^themY ; so that the
Israelites had long esteemed it a reproach to them, that they
did not practise this rite : but their misfortune was, God
had not yet given them orders how or when to begin it, and
therefore they were forced to live in an omission of it. Some
writers misunderstand the expression here made use of: a
state of uncircumcision is called the reproach of Egypt ; that
is, say they, the Egyptians thought it a reproach to them
who lived in it. It is indeed necessary to take the words in
this sense, if we would infer from them that circumcision
was originally an Egyptian rite, and that the Hebrews
learned from them the use of it. This is indeed a favourite
point with these writers ; but I have already proved it to
have no foundation z ; and I would here observe, that the
true meaning of the expression, the reproach of Egypt, is
directly contrary to the sense which these writers would
give to it : my reproach, my shame, my dishonour*, do all
signify, not what I may have to impute to others, but what
others may object to me. In like manner, reproach of Egypt,
or Egyptian reproach, signifies not what the Egyptians might
think a disrepute to others, but what other nations esteemed
a blemish and defect in them. We find an expression of like
import thus used by one of the most elegant classics. The
swallow is said to be, unhappy bird,

Cecropise domus

./Eternum opprobrium 11

the everlasting reproach of the house of Cecrops ; not as hinting
any thing for which the descendants of Cecrops might re-
proach others, but upon account of facts that were a lasting
dishonour to this family. Not the Egyptians therefore at this
time, but the Israelites thought uncircumcision a disreput-
able thing, and accounted all nations profane who did not
use this institution; and the Egyptians at this time not ob-

y Josh. v. 9. Psalm Ixix. 19.

z See vol. i. b. v. b Hor. Carm. lib. iv. ode 12.

a Gen. xxx. 23. 2 Sam. xiii. 13.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 267

serving this rite, this, in the esteem of the Israelites, was
their reproach, was a thing opprobrious, or a disgrace to
them : and therefore, when God here appointed the Israel-
ites to be circumcised, he rolled away the reproach of Egypt
from off them ; he removed from them that state of uncir-
cumcision which they thought an infamous defect in the
Egyptians. It may be here queried, whether the Egyptians
could at this time be an uncircumcised nation, if, as I have
formerly supposed, they received the rite of circumcision
very near as early as the times of Abraham . But I think
an answer hereto is not difficult ; the Pastors overran Egypt
some time before the birth of Moses, and overturned the
ancient establishment in the parts they conquered d , and
many points both of the policy and religion of Egypt were
neglected by them. These Pastors were, I think, the Hor-
ites, who fled from the children of Esau out of the land of
Edom e : they were an uncircumcised people ; and, as they
took all methods they could think proper, when they had
got possession of the land, to oppress the ancient inhabitants,
and to establish themselves ; it is not likely they should pay
so much regard to the institutions of the Egyptian religion,
as once to think of submitting to a rite, the operation of
which would for a time disable them for war, and give
the Egyptians an opportunity to attack and destroy them f .
Here therefore we may suppose a neglect of circumcision
introduced amongst the Egyptians. The Israelites were in
Egypt before these Pastors invaded the land, and, though they
suffered great oppressions from their tyranny s, yet they did
not, in compliance with these their new masters, part with this
rite of their religion ; and it might, in their opinion, be a
matter of particular reproach to the Egyptians, that they had
not only fallen under the power of foreign conquerors ; but,
in compliance to them, had altered and corrupted their reli-
gion. There are two points obvious to be remarked upon

c See vol. i. b. v. the sons of Jacob, when they were

d See vol. ii. b. vii. ad fin. 8. in sore, after having been circumcised.
Just. Gen. xxxiv. 25.

e Vol. ii. b. vii. S See vol. ii. b. vii.

f The Sichemites were destroyed by

268 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

the revival of circumcision by Joshua: the one, that the
Israelites must hereupon have a convincing demonstration
that all their fathers were to a man dead, against whom God
had denounced that their carcases should fall in the wilder-
ness 11 ; for, upon this renewal of circumcision, none having
been circumcised from the time of the exit until now 1 , it
became evident how many of the camp had been in Egypt,
and, by computing the age of those who had been there, it
would appear that there were no persons then alive, ex-
cept Caleb and Joshua, who were twenty years old when
the poll was taken in the year after the exit k . The other
point is, that as the Israelites were now in an enemy's
country, in the neighbourhood of a powerful and populous
city, and could not be secure any one day that the Canaan-
ites might not attempt to march against them ; if God had
not required it, Joshua could never have thought this a
proper time to disable any part 1 of the camp by circumcising
them, and therefore that he most certainly had a command
from God for what he did in this matter.

On the fourteenth day of the month at even, the Israelites
kept the passover in the plains of Jericho m , and on the
fifteenth day they began the feast of unleavened bread 11 , ac-
cording to the orders they had received for keeping it ;
and it being now wheat harvest in the land of Canaan, they
reaped of the corn, which was ripe in the fields, and made
their unleavened cakes with itP : and God having now
brought them into the country, where provisions were plen-
tiful, the miraculous food which he had hitherto given
them ceased ; for on the sixteenth day, and from thence
forwards, there fell no mannas . The commentators suggest
a difficulty in determining what produce of the land the
Israelites made use of: they remark, that the sheaf of the
first fruits of the harvest was to be waved before the Lord,
and a day set apart for the waving it, and performing the

h Numb. xiv. n Josh. v. n.

i Josh. v. 5. Levit. xxiii. 6.

k Numb. xxvi. 64, 65. P Josh. v. n.

1 Gen. xxxiv. 25. 9 Ver. 12.
Josh. v. 10.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 269

offerings that were to attend it, before it was lawful to eat
of the fruits of the ground r ; and the Israelites not having
performed this injunction, they contend that they used
in their feast of unleavened bread, not of the corn then
growing and ripe in the fields, but rather of corn of a
former year's produce 8 . Our translators favour this opinion,
and render the place, they did eat of the old corn of the land.
And Drusius and Bonfrerius thought they could conjecture
how a sufficient supply of such old corn might be had for
them 1 : Drusius imagines that they found corn-dealers to
buy it of; Bonfrerius, that they seized upon stores of corn
laid up by the Canaanites. But, i. it seems far more rea-
sonable to imagine, that the Israelites reaped the crop
which the fields before them afforded, than that they should
either find stores sufficient in the plains of Jericho, or mer-
chants, that either could or would produce enough for the
occasions of such a numerous hostile army. 2. It does not
appear that the observance of the wave-sheaf offering was
to commence immediately upon their entrance into the
land : I should rather think they began this performance
upon the first harvest from their own tillage : and this seems
to have been Josephus's opinion, for, 3. he expressly asserts
the Israelites to have reaped and used the crop they found
ripe and standing in the fields of Canaan . 4. None of the
ancient versions favour what our translators hint, that the
Israelites used here the old corn of the land. Nor, 5. do
the words of Joshua at all suggest it. It is indeed a common
remark of the critics, that the Hebrew word "YO3Jft mena-
bur, here used, being derived from the verb nabar, to pass,
must necessarily signify the crop, not of the present, but of
the past year : but as the word occurs, I think, nowhere
in the Bible, but in the passage before us, it is not so easy
to be certain of its signification: the verb nabar not only
signifies to pass, but, in the conjugation pihel, to cause to be

r Levit. xxiii. 10. 3>v avrois trp6rfpov ffvvtfiaive

s Vid. Pool. Synops. in loc. r6re feSdas cinropowrfs, r6v re ykp

t Ibid. ar'irov aKfjid^ovra tfSrj Xavavaiwv f0tpiov.

u Josephus's words are, Kal TV *< r Antiq. 1. v. c. 4.
Iv

270 CONNECTION OF THE SACKED [BOOK XII.

big with young. It is thus used in the book of Job x ; and,
by a metaphor authorized by Tullyy in a Latin word of
this signification, nibber may express to cause the earth to
be impregnated or loaden with corn, and menabur may be
a noun derived from the participle of this conjugation, and
signify the burden or crop upon the ground; and the sug-
gestion of the Israelites using old corn of a past year's growth
will thus appear to have no foundation in the Hebrew text
at all.

Upon the Israelites'* encampment in the plains of Jericho,
the inhabitants of that city shut up their gates, and kept
close within their walls 2 . The cities of the Canaanites
were encompassed with walls so high, as to be said to be
fenced up to heaven a ; and men had not yet invented proper
engines of war for the assaulting such towns, so as to get
possession of them. We shall find, ages after these times,
cities impregnable to the greatest armies, by the strength
and height of their walls : the city of Troy could never
have been taken by the Greeks without a stratagem, and
Joshua was obliged to invent an artifice, in order to gain
entrance into Ai b . The men of Jericho, having shut up their
city, might reasonably think themselves secure from the Is-
raelites, and Joshua and his army could have no hopes of
reducing them, except by starving them into a surrender ;
unless they could allure them to make sallies, and thereby
get an opportunity of beating back their forces to the city,
and entering with them. But here the Lord appeared unto
Joshua in the form of a man, with a drawn sword in his
hand 6 . The Person, who now appeared, called himself the
prince, or leader, or captain of the host of the Lord d ; a very
proper appellation for that divine Person who had frequently
appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses : for the

x Job xxi. 10. et fundat ex sese. De Nat. Deorum,

y Tully thus uses the word gravi- lib. ii. c. 33.

data. He says, Quod si ea, quce a z Josh. vi. i.

terra stirpibus continentur, arte natures a Deut. ix. i .

vivunt et vigent ; profecto ipsa terra ea- b Josh. viii.

dem vi continetur et arte natures ^ quippe c Ver. 13.

qu<p, gravidata seminibus, omnia pariat, d Ver. 14.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 271

Lord of hosts is his name e , is one of his titles. That the Per-
son who at this time appeared to Joshua was not an angel,
but this God of Israel, seems evident from the worship
which Joshua paid him f , and from his requiring the same
regard to be had to his presence as he before demanded
from Moses, when he called himself the God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacobs ; and accordingly
Joshua gives him the incommunicable 11 name of God, call-
ing him Jehovah, in his relation of what he said to him 1 .
He told Joshua, that he had given Jericho into his hand,
and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valour k ; he
instructed him what he expected the Israelites to do, to
express their reliance on his promise 1 ; and when they had
for seven days marched round Jericho, in the manner which
the Lord had directed, the walls of Jericho, without any
assault, fell down flat upon the ground, and they entered the
town and sacked it, and put all the inhabitants, man, wo-
man, and child, to the sword, except Rahab and her family,
and destroyed all the cattle, and burnt the city; only the
silver and gold, and the vessels of brass and iron, they re-
served, according to the directions which had been given
them" 1 . And Joshua pronounced the man to be accursed
who should ever attempt to rebuild Jericho, and prophesied,
that he should lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and
in his youngest son set up the gates ofit n ; and this prophesy
was remarkably fulfilled above five hundred years after in
the days of Ahab ; for in his days Hiel the Bethelite built
Jericho, and his eldest son Abiram died when he laid the
foundations, and his youngest son Serug died at his setting
up the gates of it . The taking of Jericho was much noised
throughout all the country?, and the Israelites prepared to
attack Ai, a neighbouring city; but the detachments ap-
pointed for this service were entirely routed ^: whereupon

e Jer. x. 16. * Josh. vi. 3 5.

f Josh. v. 14. mVer. l6 2 5-

S Ver. 15. Exod. iii. 5, 6. n Ver. 26.

h See vol. ii. b. ix. Isa. xlii. n. i Kings xvi. 34.

i Josh. vi. 2. P Josh. vi. 27.

k Ibid. q Ch. viii. 5.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

Joshua and the elders of Israel consulted God, and were
informed that a transgression had been committed in the
sacking Jericho, for which they suffered this punishment 1 ';
and, upon inquiry, Achan the son of Carmi, of the tribe
of Judah, was found to be the transgressor, and he and
his family were condemned to death, and all his substance
burnt in the valley of Achor. After this exemplary pu-
nishment of Achan's transgression, the Israelites soon took
Ai, and destroyed all the inhabitants of it, and they took the
cattle and spoil of the city for a prey unto themselves ; ac-
cording to the word of the Lord which he commanded
Joshua 8 .

Moses had enjoined, that when they should have passed
over Jordan, they should set up on mount Ebal great stones,
and plaister them with plaister, and write the Law upon
them 1 ; and they were to build an altar there unto the Lord
their God, and to offer burnt-offerings and peace-offerings,
and to celebrate a feast unto the Lord u ; and they were to
divide the people, and to place six of the tribes on Gerizim,
a mountain opposite to Ebal, and six on mount Ebal, and
then the Levites from mount Ebal were to read, with a loud
voice, the curses set down by Moses for the transgressions of
the law x ; unto each of which the people were to answer,
Amen?. Then the blessings promised to the observance of the
law were to be pronounced from mount Gerizim 2 , and
hereby the Israelites were to make acknowledgment of
their covenant with the Lord their God, and of their obli-
gation to keep his commandments a ; and Joshua being now
come to the place where these two mountains were situate,
took care to have every part of what God had commanded
herein punctually performed b .

It may not seem at first sight easy to determine what it
was that Joshua here wrote upon the stones which he set up
on mount Ebal: the Samaritans indeed, if -what they offer

r Josh. vii. 6 n. 7 Deut. xxvii. 14, &c.

s Ver. ii 26. viii. i 29. z Ch. xxviii.

t Deut. xxvii. 2 4. a Ch. xxvii. 9, 10.

u Ver. 5 7. b Josh. viii. 30 35.
* Ver. 12, 13.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 273

might be admitted, determine the question very clearly;
for in their Pentateuch, in the 2oth chapter of Exodus, after
the tenth commandment, they add these with other words ;
And it shall be, when the Lord thy God shall cause thee to
enter the land of the Canaanites which thou goest unto to
possess it, that thou shalt set up great stones, and shalt plaister
them with plaister, and shalt write upon the stones all the
words of this law, &c. So that, according to this ac-
count, the command for what was here to be done was
originally given in an audible voice by God himself from
mount Sinai to all the people, and what Moses directed
about it afterwards must be understood with reference and
agreeably to what God himself here first commanded about
it; and accordingly the command here given being that
the Israelites should write upon the stones all the words of
this law, namely, of the law just then published, (for there
had then been no other as yet given,) it will follow, that the
Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, was what they were to
inscribe upon the stones to be erected. This would unques-
tionably be the fact, if what the Samaritans here insert in
their Pentateuch ought indeed to be inserted: but that it ought
not is most evident ; for Moses himself expressly testifies, that
when God spake the Ten Commandments out of the midst of
the fire c from mount Sinai unto the assembly of the Israelites,
that he spake only the Ten Commandments, and added no
more; and, consequently, all that the Samaritans add here
is a manifest interpolation. And it is a known imputation,
which the Jews have ever charged them with, that they
have tampered with this place, as well as changed the names
of the two mountains Ebal and Gerizim; putting Gerizim
where Moses wrote Ebal, and Ebal where Moses wrote Ge-
rizim d , in order to procure a veneration to mount Gerizim,
such as might favour their choosing it in opposition to the
Jews for their place of worship : and thus we have no in-
formation from the Samaritan Pentateuch about what
Joshua inscribed, or was directed to inscribe, upon the
stones set up on mount Ebal. The Jewish writers abound

c Deut. v. 22. d See Prideaux, Connect, part i. b. vi. p. 606. Lond. 1725.

274 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

in fictions upon this point : some of them say that Joshua
inscribed the whole five books of Moses ; nay, they add, that
he did it seventy times over, in seventy different languages,
in order to leave monuments such as might instruct all the
nations upon earth in the law, and that in their own tongue.
And thus these writers were so far from seeing any diffi-
culty in the query, which to others has seemed considerable ;
namely, whether Joshua could find either stones enow to
contain, or had time enough to inscribe, so large a transcript
as a copy of the whole five books of Moses, that they shew
evidently, that nothing can be so marvellous but that their
imagination can surmount it. If 700 or 7000 had been as
favourite a number with them as 70, they would have had
no scruple of multiplying the copies up to their humour :
but 70 being the number of the elders of Israel chosen by
Moses, and appointed by God to assist in the government of
his people 6 , they hence imagined that there were originally
from the dispersion of mankind but 70 nations and 70 dif-
ferent languages in the world; though, considering that
Moses and the high priest, joined with the 70, made two
more, they should have made 72 their darling number, as it
was afterwards, when Aristeas's fiction about the Septuagint
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures obtained amongst
them f . Moses, with the elders of Israel, commanded the people,
saying, Keep all the commandments which I command you this
day ; and it shall be on the day when you shall pass over Jor-
dan) that thou shalt set thee up great stones, and plaister them
with plaister, and thou shalt write upon them all the words of
this law. This was the command which Moses gave about
what they were to do at mount Ebal; and I have often
thought, that all the words of this law might be the words
of the law he then at that time gave them ; namely, the
words which Moses has set down in the 27th and 28th
chapters of Deuteronomy, beginning at the I5th verse of
the 27th chapter, cursed be the man, and so on to the end of
the 28th chapter. That this was what Joshua wrote, and
consequently what Moses had enjoined to be written, seems

e Numb. xi. f See Prideaux's Connect, part ii. book i.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 275

evident to me from the account we have of Joshua's per-
formance of this commandment g : Joshua built an altar unto
the Lord God of Israel in mount Ebal an altar of whole
stones , and he wrote there upon the stones, in the presence of
the people* 1 , mishneh torath Moseh, i. e. a copy of the law of
Moses ; certainly not a copy of all the statutes of the Jewish
law ; for the stones of the altar could not be sufficient to
contain such a large body of institutions ; rather he wrote
the several curses and blessings which Moses had charged to
be here pronounced to the people ' : this appears to have been
the fact from the 34th verse. Joshua, after he had wrote the
law, read what he had written, all the words of the law ;
and what he read was only the blessings and cursings, accord-
ing to all that is written in the book of the law k ; so that he
transcribed only the several blessings and cursings that Moses
had recorded ; these he copied out from the book of the
law, and wrote upon the stones mishneh, a copy or duplicate
of them. As to the opinion of some writers, that Joshua
might perhaps inscribe, not indeed all the law of Moses, but
an abstract or compendium of it ; the heads or titles, say
others ; the account we have of what Joshua wrote does
not favour any such conjectures : he copied from the book of
the law the several blessings and cursings which were here
to be pronounced : the transcript of these is said to be a copy
of the law of Moses ; and so it was, as far as the particular
case they were here concerned in obliged them to take a
copy of it.

The success of the Israelites against Jericho and Ai alarmed
the neighbouring nations of Canaan, and caused them to
form a confederate army for their common safety 1 ; but the
Gibeonites, who were a people of the Hivites m , declined
the association, and sent ambassadors to Joshua, and by a

e Joshua viii. 30 32. English, and he wrote it] before the

h The Hebrew text is, faces [in the presence] of the children

rmn HDXDO DN n'DaNrrby otiranan of Israel.

.bTCj' 'aa nc^ ana TEN rum * Deut. xxvii. n, &c.

i. e. And he wrote there upon the stones k Josh. viii. 34.

a copy of the Larv of Moses, which he l Ch. ix. r, 2.

[i. e. Joshua] wrote, [we should say in m Ver. 19.

VOL. II. T

276 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

stratagem obtained a league with Israel". Joshua and the
elders of Israel appear to have treated unadvisedly with this
people ; for they asked not counsel about them at the mouth of
the Lord : and it may be questioned whether the treaty,
which they went into with them, was not directly contrary
to what God had commanded ; for, with some particular
nations, of one of which these Gibeonites were a people P,
God had strictly commanded them to smite them and utterly
destroy them, and to make no covenant with them, nor shew
mercy unto them^. In like manner there are doubts to be raised
concerning the Israelites' performance of what they had pro-
mised. When they came unto the cities of this people, they
smote them not, because the princes of the congregation had sworn
unto them by the Lord God of Israel r ; they apprehended that
they might not touch them, because of the oath which they had
sworn unto them 5 ; and yet one would think that they did
not truly keep the public faith which they had given ; for,
though they did indeed let the Gibeonites live, yet they did
not perform this promise in the public sense in which they
seem to have treated with this people ; they took from them
the very being of a nation ; reduced them to a state of servi-
tude, which a brave and valiant people would probably have
died a thousand deaths rather than have submitted to *. These
and other reflections, that do naturally arise from what the
book of Joshua offers us upon this affair, would induce us to
inquire, whether the Israelites were absolutely commanded
utterly to destroy all the inhabitants of the seven nations of
Canaan ; whether they could upon no terms enter into a league
with any of them ; whether what the Israelites granted to the
Gibeonites upon their embassy was contrary to what God had
commanded ; and how they at last acquitted themselves of the
league they had made with them.

I. Were the Israelites absolutely commanded to destroy all
the inhabitants of the nations, whose lands God had given

n Josh. ix. 4 15. s Josh. ix. 20.

Ver. 14. t Libertatem (says Caius Manlius in

P Exod. xxxiv. 12, &c. Sallust. lib. de bello Catilinar.) quam

q Deut. vii. 2. nemo bonus nisi cum vita simul

r Josh. ix. 18. amittit.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 277

them for an inheritance ? I answer, No. The direction to
the Israelites was this : When thou comest nigh unto a city to
fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. And it shall be, if
it make thee an answer of peace, and open to thee, then it shall
be, that all the people that is found therein shall be tributaries
unto thee, and shall serve thee u . Thus the Israelites were to
behave unto all cities ; unto the cities of the Hittites, of the
Amorites, of the Canaanites, of the Perizzites, of the Hivites,
of the Jebusites, and of the Girgashites*; as well as unto the
cities of other nations, as is intimated from what follows :
If, says Moses, it will make no peace with thee, but will make
war against thee, then thou shalt besiege it : and when the
Lord thy God hath delivered it into thy hands, thou shalt
smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword : but the
women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the
city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself.
Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which are very far off
from thee, which are not of the cities of these nations. But of
the cities of these people, which the Lord thy Goddoth give thee
for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth :
but thou shalt utterly destroy them ; namely, the Hittites, and
the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites,
and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded theeJ.
In these verses Moses directs the Israelites how they were
to behave towards the cities of their enemies that should
attempt to hold out against them : and they were ordered
to use a severity towards the nations of the land of their
inheritance, if they refused peace, greater than towards the

u Deut. xx. 10, ii. et Gentium, juxta disciplin. Hebraeor.

x Trinas (says Rabbi Samuel Ben lib. vi. c. 13. p. 736. ed. Lond. 1640.
Nachman) praemisit Josua epistolas in 7 Deut. xx. 12 17. Our present

terrain Israeliticam, seu potius litteris Hebrew copies seem to have omitted

tria proposuit ; qui fugam mallent, the Girgashites, who were one of the

aufugerent j qui pacem, in foedus ve- seven nations that were to be de-

nirent ; qui bellum, arma susciperent. stroyed ; see Deut. vii. The Samaritan

Unde Girgessei credentes in Deum text supplies this defect in this place,

O. M. aufugerunt, in Africam se con- and gives us the seven nations in this or-

ferentes Gibeonitse in foedus venie- der ; the Canaanites, and the Amorites,

bant, adeoque terrse Tsraeliticse incolse and the Hittites, and the Girgashites,

manebant ; reges triginta ac unus bel- and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and

lum susceperunt, et cecidere. Gem. the Jebusites.
Hierosolym. Vid. Selden de Jure Nat.

$78 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XIT.

cities of other nations for the like obstinacy ; which there had
been no room to enjoin, if these nations were to have been
utterly destroyed, without any offers of peace to be made to
them. But the Israelites were to proclaim peace to all the
cities of their enemies ; and whatever city accepted the offer,
the inhabitants of it were to become their servants : but if the
peace thus offered was refused, then, if the city that rejected
it was not one of the land of their inheritance, the Israelites,
as soon as they had reduced it, were to put all the men to the
sword, and to spare the women, and little ones, and cattle,
and to take the spoil : or, if it was a city of the land of their
inheritance that had rejected their offers, then, as soon as
they could reduce it, they were utterly to destroy all the in-
habitants, and to save alive nothing that breathed belonging
to it. That this is indeed the true meaning of what Moses
directs, is confirmed from a remark of Joshua's. He observes,
that as God had purposed utterly to destroy the nations of
Canaan 2 , so he did not dispose any of them to accept of peace
from the Israelites, in order to their preservation : there was
not, says he, a city that made peace with the children of Israel^
save the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon : all other they
took in battle. For it was of the Lord* to liar den their
hearts*, that they should come against Israel in battle, that
he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no
favour ; but that he might destroy them, as the Lord com-
manded Moses c . Cunseus comments upon this text very
justly to this purpose : " It is plain, " says he, " from hence,
" that these nations were therefore extirpated, because they
" chose rather the chance of war, than to accept the terms
" which the Israelites could offer them : but if they would
" have surrendered when summoned, undoubtedly they had
" not been destroyed d ."

z See Wisdom xii. 3. case of Pharaoh, what is the true
a 1 cannot but observe how closely meaning of the Scripture expression, of
the reflection of Joshua here is copied the Lord's hardening any one's heart.
by Homer. In all the evils that came See vol. ii. b. ix.
upon the Greeks from the difference c Josh. xi. 19, 20.
betweeen Achilles and Agamemnon, d Enimvero illud hinc efficitur, de-
Homer says, Aibs 8' rreAet'ero 0ov\-f)- letas propterea eas gentes esse, quia
11. i. belli fortunam tentare, quam conncere
b I have formerly observed in the pacem in Israelitarum leges malue-

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 279

There is a passage in the book of Deuteronomy, which
may seem to intimate that these nations of Canaan were
absolutely to be destroyed by the Israelites, without any
terms of favour or mercy : When the Lord thy God, says
Moses, shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to pos-
sess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites,
and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and
the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations
greater and mightier than thou: and when the Lord thy God
shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly
destroy them : thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew
mercy unto them. But thus shall ye deal with them: ye shall
destroy their altars, and break down their images, and burn
their graven images with fire. And thou shalt consume all the
people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall
have no pity upon them 6 . I would observe upon this text,
that it is a direction to the Israelites what they were to do
to these nations after they had attacked them and subdued
them; but it gave them no charge to destroy any people
who should choose to submit and surrender without engag-
ing in a war against them. The directions given in this
text were to be executed when the Lord had brought the
Israelites into the lands of these nations f , and had cast out the
inhabitants before them s : when the Lord had given the
people of these nations into the hands of the Israelites 11 ,
and had discomfited them, and caused them to flee'; then
indeed the Israelites were to have no pity upon them, but
to smite them, and utterly destroy them ; to consume them,
and make an end of them k . This vengeance the Israelites

runt. Quod si fecialibus auscultassent, brew word is DrP3PP, which I take

utique jam salus eorum neutiquam in to be not in the second person THOU,

dubio fuisset. Cunaeus de Repub. He- but to be the third person of the prse-

brseor. 1. ii. c. 20. terit Hiphil of the verb DD2, and that

e Deut. vii. i, 2, 5, 16, &c. the Lord thy God going before, is the

f Ver. i. nominative case to it. I should ima-

Ibid. gine the word i>:ob to be referred to

h Ver. 2. this verb, and should render the place

1 None of the translators of the thus : And when the Lord thy God shall

Bible have, 1 think, carefully attended have given them up, and smote them

to the Hebrew text in rendering the before thee, thou shalt utterly destroy

words in the 2d verse, which we trans- them, &c.

late, thou shalt smite them. The He- k Deut. vii. 2.

280 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

had in charge to execute upon all these nations after they
had entered into a war with them, and obtained a conquest
over them. But nothing in the text intimates, that they
were to have proceeded with this severity against any nation
that chose to surrender, before they had tried the issue of
war, and determined their fate by it. If any of them had
not come out against the Israelites in battle 1 , but had deli-
vered up their cities upon summons, before the Lord had
defeated and discomfited them, they might have had terms
to save their lives". But let us inquire what terms the
Israelites could give them, and whether,

II. They could make a covenant, or enter into a league
with them. And this point may be clearly determined, if
we consider distinctly the several injunctions laid upon
them. And here, i. they were evidently commanded not
to tolerate the worship of the idols of Canaan in any
part of the land. Wheresoever they could carry their vic-
torious arms, they were to take care not to bow down to the
gods of these nations, but they were utterly to overthrow
them, to break down their images , to destroy their altars, cut
down their groves? ; or, as it is expressed in another place,
they were utterly to destroy all the places, wherein these na-
tions had served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon
the hills, and under every green tree : they were to overthrow
their altars, break their pillars, burn their groves with fire,
hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the
names of them out of the placet. Thus they were entirely to
abolish the religion that was embraced in these nations ; and
it is hard to be imagined that they could make a league
with any of the states of them whilst they were so doing :
for as a league between two nations implies, in the very
notion of it, their having upon some terms given their mu-
tual faith each to other to observe punctually what had
been stipulated between them ; and as such public faith
was, according to the custom of these times, generally given

1 According to Joshua xi. 19, 20. Exod. xxiii. 24.

mDeut. xx. TO,I i. P Ch. xxxiv. 13.

n Ibid, et Josh, ubi sup. 1 Deut. xii. 2, 3.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 281

and taken at a public sacrifice, where the parties to the
treaty sware solemnly to each other by their respective
gods r ; so it is hard to say how the Israelites, who were in
no wise to allow the idols of Canaan to be gods, could take
this public faith from the worshippers of them. And this, I
think, is hinted in the command given them : Thou shalt
make no covenant with them and their gods s . According to
the forms of these times, a covenant could hardly be made
with a people without admitting their gods into it, to be
their witnesses of it, and avengers of those who should break
it: but the Israelites could not so far recognize the false
objects of the worship of these nations, and therefore could
not thus enter into covenant with them. But, 2. the Is-
raelites were not only to demolish and destroy the idols of
Canaan, but they were to take away from the people both
their place and nation. All the lands and cities of the se-
veral nations that inhabited Canaan were to be divided by
lot amongst the tribes of the children of Israel, to every
family of each tribe a suitable part and portion of them 1 ;
and in order hereto the Israelites were, as God should en-
able them, to dispossess the inhabitants, and to take possession
of them. God had indeed determined not to drive out the
Canaanites before the Israelites all in one year, immediately
upon the Israelites entering into their land, because such a
procedure would have had its inconveniences 11 : but the
Israelites were, as they increased, to be enabled by little and
little to subdue them x , and they were strictly commanded,
as they grew able, to take from them their possessions, and
not to suffer any of them to retain wherewith to live as a
people amongst them?. From the soth of Deuteronomy, it
may perhaps at first sight seem as if the Israelites had power,

r See and compare Gen. xxvi. 28 bidden, the making or confirming a

31. with xxxi. 44 55. And in this league with them, for the doing of

manner the heathen nations made which it was necessary to proceed ac-

truces and leagues with one another, cording to the religious rites used for

as might be proved from many places that purpose,
in Homer, and other ancient writers. * Numb, xxxiii. 50. and xxvi. i 53.

s Exod. xxiii. 32. Our English ver- Exod. xxiii. 29.
sion of the text is injudicious, and x Ver. 30.

not strictly agreeable to the Hebrew 7 Ver. 33. Deut. vii. 22, 23. Josh,

particle. One thing only is here for- xxiii. 5, 7,11 13.

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

when they summoned the cities of these nations, if they had
an answer of peace from them, to let the inhabitants hold
their cities upon condition of paying tribute for them 2 ; but
the text duly cnosidered gave no such liberty : if a city opened
unto them, then it was to be, that all the people that were
found therein were to be tributaries, and to serve them 3 . It is
not said that the Israelites were to put such cities under tri-
bute, which would have been the expression, if they were to
have treated them as political bodies, and to have con-
tinued them in that capacity, only raising a tax or tribute
upon them b ; but all the people found therein were to be
tributaries and servants : the terms to be given were, not to
a city or people in their collective capacity, but to the in-
dividuals ; to the several persons who had composed it : and
they were to become tributaries and servants in the manner
that Solomon afterwards dealt with their children in some
particular cities where he found them c ; he made them pay
tribute 1 ^, or, as it is otherwise expressed in the book of
Kings, he levied a tribute of bond-service upon them 6 , the
nature of which is sufficiently explained by what follows :
Of the children of Israel did Solomon make no bondmen; but
they were his men of war, and his servants, and his princes,
and his captains, and bare rule over the people that wrought in
the work* ; and consequently the tributaries, those who paid
him the tribute of bond-service, were, under the direction of
these Israelites, obliged to perform the work and service that
was required of them. And that this was the true intent
of the direction to the Israelites in the text above citeds, is
evident from what appears to have been the failure, when
afterwards they did not execute what had been given in
charge to them. Thus, after the death of Joshua, the chil-

z Deut. xx. 11. them ; so it is not said that all the

a Ibid. people became tributaries unto him and

b When Pharaoh Necho, after the served him, but that he put the land

death of Josiah, sent for Jehoahaz, to a tribute. 2 Kings xxiii. 33.

whom the people had made king at c 2 Chron. viii. 7, 8.

Jerusalem, and sent him prisoner to d Ibid.

Egypt, and set up Jehoiakim king in e i Kings ix. 21.

his stead ; as he did not take away f Ver. 22, 23.

from the Jews their being a people, g Deut. xx. n.

though he raised a tax or tribute upon

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 283

dren of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites from
Jerusalem 11 ; the children of Manasseh did not dispossess the
inhabitants of Bethshean, and several other towns, of their
respective cities 1 . Ephraim was faulty in like manner with
regard to the Canaanites of Gezer k , Zebulun to the inhabit-
ants of Kitron and Nahalol 1 , Asher and Naphtali to several
other cities 1 ": though in all these cases, as the several tribes
grew strong enough, they reduced these communities so
far as to compel them to pay tribute for their possessions".
But because herein they came to terms with them, contrary
to what God had commanded them, to make no league with
them ; therefore what Joshua had before threatened? was
now denounced against them ; that God would not drive
these nations out from before them ; but that they should be as
thorns in their sides, and their gods a snare unto them**. This,
I think, is a true representation of what the Israelites were
enjoined, with regard to the treatment which the inhabit-
ants of these nations were to have from them ; and from all
this, I think, it evidently appears, that the Israelites could
enter into no alliance, could make no league 1 ", no covenant
with them. They had indeed liberty to give them quarter, to
grant them their lives upon condition they would become
their servants: but this, I think, cannot properly be called
making a league, covenant, or alliance with them ; for a
league is one thing, and servitude quite another 8 . The word
league is indeed used in a large sense by the Civilians ; the
Romans admitted it to signify a grant of any favours to con-
quered nations* ; and Diodorus Siculus uses a word of like

h Judges i. 2 1 . qui non foedere, sed per ditionem in

i Ver. 27. fidem venissent. Item de Apulis, ita

k Ver. 29. in societatem eos esse acceptos, ut non

1 Ver. 30. sequo foedere, sed ut in ditione populi

m Ver. 32, 33. Romani essent. Vid. Calvin. Lexic.

n Ver. 30, 33, 35. Jurid. in verbo Foedus.
Exod. xxiii. 32. Deut. vii. 2. t Esse autem tria genera foede-

P Josh, xxiii. 13. rum : unum, cum bello victis dice-

Q Judg. ii. 2. rentur leges : ubi enim omnia ei, qui

r Exod. and Deut. ubi sup. armis plus potest, dedita essent, quse

8 Dedititii non proprie in foedere, sed ex iis habere victos, quibus mulctari

in ditione esse dicuntur, unde illud eos velit, ipsius jus atque arbitrium

Latinorum de Campanis apud Livium ; esse. Livii Hist. lib. xxxiv. c. 57.
Campanorum aliam conditionem esse,

284 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

import, where a conqueror had reduced the persons he had
subdued to accept such terms as he thought fit to give
them u . In like manner the men of Jabesh-Gilead were of-
fered a league with the Ammonite, by which they were to
submit to serve him, and to have all their right eyes thrust
out, in order to be made a reproach to all Israel x : and in
both these cases, as the people treated with were to be con-
tinued a people, what was granted might be styled a league
or covenant made with them. But the Israelites were not
to suffer the nations of Canaan any longer to have a being :
their cities, country, and possessions, were to be taken from
them, and their persons to become the property of the new
possessors of their lands and estates : and under these circum-
stances, whatever favour each Canaanite might meet with in
his private capacity from the several Israelites into whose
hands he might fall, yet no league or covenant could be
lawfully concluded with any nation or community of them ;
because the Israelites were not at liberty to permit any such
body-politic of them to remain in being, to receive and enjoy
what by such league might be granted to them. Let us now
inquire,

III. Whether the league concluded between Israel and
the Gibeonites was contrary to what God had enjoined. And
I should think it certainly was ; for, unquestionably, the
peace and the league made by Joshua with this people was
of a public nature : it was confirmed to their ambassadors,
who appeared to treat no otherwise than in their public
character ; as agents, not stipulating to save the lives
of a few or of any number of private men, but as nego-
tiating for the public, for the health and safety of the com-
munity that employed them : and to take occasion, from
the words that tell us the nature of the league, which
Joshua made with this people, to say, that he had only pro-
mised to let them HveY, and consequently that the Israelites
had fully performed what they had engaged, inasmuch as

Tavra/j-ov Kal rovs /UCT* avrov Kara- Kal ir6\iv ey KaroiKrfffiv. Diodor. Sic.

, Kal ffirovSas olas <?j8ouA<-To Eel. p. 839. edit. Rhodoman.
-rrapaffKevaffdfjLevos e5w x&pav x I Sam. xi. 2. Y Josh. ix. 15.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 285

they did not put the men, women, and children of Gibeon
and its cities to the sword, would be, I should think, a lower
quibble than the Romans were guilty of to the Carthagi-
nians ; when, having granted by a public decree of the se-
nate that Carthage should be a free state, enjoy its own
laws, and possess its domains in Africa, if they imme-
diately delivered hostages, and performed what the consuls
had in charge to require of them z ; they explained to them
that they thought the people, not the city, to be the state of
Carthage a , and demanded of them to raise their city, and to
build themselves another in a situation higher up in their
country b . The Israelites were undoubtedly obliged by
their treaty to stop the war when they came to the cities
of Gibeon ; they had disarmed themselves, and were not at
liberty to touch, or to smite this people, because of the oath
they had sworn unto them ; and as the saving alive the in-
habitants, but demolishing or taking from them their cities
and inheritance, would have been not keeping, but evading
the public league that was made with this nation ; so in
this the Israelites had unadvisedly brought themselves into
a great strait, having solemnly granted what they could not
perform without a manifest neglect and violation of what
God had in the strictest manner required of them. It will,

IV. Be asked, how then did the Israelites acquit them-
selves in this matter? And to this, I think, the answer is
obvious ; they remonstrated to the Gibeonites the fraud they
had been guilty of to obtain the treaty ; they proposed as
an expedient, upon what terms they could give them their
lives ; the Gibeonites consented to accept the offer they
made them, and their consenting hereto was what set the
Israelites free from the embarrassments they were under in

z 'Eai/ rots virdrois rpiaKOffiovs TOVS captio : frustra vocem Carthaginis ur-

fvSo^ordrovs afycav ircuSas es 6wpfiav gebant Romani, dicentes civium mul-

irapdo'XtiHriy Kal T' &\\a KaraKOvffaxnv titudinem, non urbem significari. Grot,

aura)//, ftfft Kapx-r)86i/a tXevdepav re de Jure Belli et Pac. lib. ii. c. 16.

Kal avr6vofji.ov, Kal yriv 'dffiqv f-^ovaiv tv . 15.

Aiflvp. Appian. de bello Punic, p. 43. b "EKO-TTJTC rrjs Kapx^vos ^/-ui/, Kal

ed. Steph. 1592. avoiKiffaaOf '6in) fleAere TT)S v/J-trepas, by-

a Kapx^va yap v/j.a.s, ov rli 68a<J>os, So^Kovra araSlovs curb 6a\d<r<rr)s' r-f)vSe

^yovfj.6a. Id. p. 52. In voce, liberam yap TJ/JUV Hyvaxn-ai KaraffKatyai. Appian.

relinqui Carthaginem, manifesta erat p. 46.

286 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

this matter. Joshua said unto the Gibeonites, WJierefore
have ye beguiled us, saying, We are far from you ; when ye
dwell among us c 9 The Israelites had fully explained to this
people, that they should be under difficulties in making a
league with them, if they dwelt amongst them d ; and there-
fore Joshua had the highest reason to resent and expostulate
the inexcusable baseness of their behaviour in the treaty.
However, as the Israelites had power to receive any of these
nations, if the people of them would become their bondsmen
to serve them 6 , upon these terms Joshua made them an
offer of their lives f . The Gibeonites embraced the proposal
which he made to them ; acknowledged that they expected
that all their lands could not but be taken from them ; and
that they aimed at nothing more, in what they had done, than
barely to save their lives s, and that they entirely acquiesced
in his disposal of them in any manner he could contrive for
them h . Accordingly, upon this second treaty or accommo-
dation, Joshua made them hewers of wood and drawers of wa-
ter, for the congregation and for the altar' 1 . Had the Gibeon-
ites been unwilling to comply with what was thus proposed
to them, I imagine Joshua would have brought their cause
before the Lord*; would have asked the special direction of
God, before he and the elders of Israel would have thought
themselves at liberty to proceed in it. Two things may be
observed upon the manner of finishing this affair, i. Joshua
did not dissipate this people by allotting them to be servants
to the families of the Israelites : he kept them together, as
much a nation as he had power to allow them to be, a
public body of servants for the occasions of the congregation.
2. He seems to have punished their perfidy by appointing
them and their posterity to a perpetual bondage: and this,
I think, he expressed to them : Now therefore ye are accursed;
and there shall none of you be freed from being bondmen^. Had
the Gibeonites treated openly and uprightly with the Israel -

c Josh. ix. 22. h Josh. ix. 25.

d Ver. 7. i Ver. 26, 27.

e Vid. quse sup. k Numb, xxvii. 5. ix. 8.

f Josh. ix. 23. 1 Josh. ix. 23.

Ver. 24.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 287

ites, I imagine there was nothing in the law that would
have prevented their being received upon such terms as
that, after some generations, their children might have come
into the congregation, and been free in Israel 1 ".

When the Canaanites heard that the inhabitants of Gi-
beon were gone over to the Israelites, they were uneasy at
it: such a defection from their common cause gave them
new fears; for Gibeon was a large and powerful city n .
However, they resolved to take measures to deter other
towns from following this example, and to defeat Joshua of
the additional strength which the Gibeonites might be to
him. And for this end they immediately marched their
forces, under the command of five of their kings, against
the Gibeonites : the Gibeonites sent unto Gilgal to Joshua
for succour P: Joshua with his army soon came to their re-
lief, and obtained an entire victory over the five kings, took
them all prisoners, and put them to deaths Two very
great miracles attended the battle this day, fought between
the Canaanites and the Israelites : one, that God was pleased
by a storm of hailstones to kill more of the enemy than fell
by the sword of the Israelites r ; the other, that, at the word
of Joshua, the sun and moon were seen to stand still for near
a whole day, to afford the Israelites a continuance of day-
light to pursue their victory 8 . It is obvious to observe, how
remarkably pertinent both these miracles were to the cir-
cumstances of the persons concerned in them. The elements,
and the sun, moon, and lights of heaven, were the deities at
this time worshipped by the inhabitants of Canaan 1 ; but
the Israelites were the servants of a truer God, by whose
command, and under whose protection, they were to war
against these nations and against their gods ; and what
greater demonstration could be given of the power of their
God to support them, or of the inability of the false deities
of the Canaanites to assist their worshippers, than to see
that the God of Israel could cause these to contribute to,

m Deut. xxiii. Q Josh. x. 7.

n Josh. x. i, 2. r Ver. u.

o Ver. 35. s Ver. 13.

P Ver. 6. t See vol. i. b. v.

288 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

instead of preventing, the ruin that was coming upon those
who served them ? We cannot imagine that Joshua should,
without a special intimation from heaven, have addressed
unto God the prayer concerning the sun and moon, which
he is recorded to have made in the sight of Israel"; for, of
what an extravagance had he appeared guilty, if an effect
had not been given to what he asked for ! or how could he
be so wild as to think of an accomplishment of so strange an
expectation as this would have been, had it been only a
thought of his own heart to wish for it? But unquestion-
ably the same Lord, who spake unto him before the battle ;
who bade him not fear the armies of the Canaanites; who
assured him that they should not be able to stand before
him; directed him to ask for this wonderful miracle, and,
in granting what he had asked for, gave a full testimony both
to the Israelites and their enemies, that the gods of the hea-
then were but idols, and that it is the Lord that made) and
that ruleth in the heavens*. But there are some further ob-
servations that ought to be made upon this extraordinary
miracle. For,

It is remarkable that what Joshua desired, and what was
said to be done upon this occasion, is recorded in the sacred
history in words not agreeable to what are now abundantly
known to be the motions of the bodies that compose
the mundane system. Joshua desired that the sun might
stand still upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon?:
and the event, said to be the effect of this his prayer unto the
Lord z , is thus related ; And the sun stood still, and the moon
stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their ene-
mies. So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted
not to go down about a whole day*; and there was no day like
that before it or after it. The thing which Joshua here prayed
for, was to have the day lengthened ; and the manner, in which
he desired to have this his prayer accomplished, was, by having
the sun and moon stopped in their motions : and agreeably
to his request, the text tells us, that the sun and moon were

u Josh. x. 12. z Josh. x. 12.

x Psalm xcvi. 5. a Ver. 13.

y Josh. x. 12.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

stopped, and did not move forward for about a whole day.
But it is now sufficiently known, that day and night are
not caused by any motion of the sun and moon, but rather
by the earth's rotation upon its own axis ; and consequently
the sacred pages state this fact absolutely wrong, as to the
circumstances that caused it : and if so, can we think them
to have been dictated by God, who cannot err in this or in
any matter? I answer, i. though the succession of day and
night is indeed caused by a real motion of the earth, and
not of the sun and moon, as our modern astronomers can
abundantly demonstrate ; yet to appearance, not the earth,
but the sun and moon seem to have those motions which are
vulgarly ascribed to them : as to a mariner at sea, sailing
within view of a distant coast, not the ship he sails in, but
the land he sees at a distance, seems to be in motion as he
passes by it. 2. In the early ages, both before and long
after the days of Joshua, the most learned astronomers had
no notion of the improvements which our modern professors
have since attained to, but conceived the sun and moon to
have their respective courses, according to what common
appearance enabled them to judge and think of them ; and
agreeably hereto they formed their schemes, and thought
themselves able to solve and account for all appearances by
them. And, consequently, 3. had God enabled Joshua to
form his desire of a longer day in a manner more agreeable
to our new and more accurate astronomy, and dictated to
him to record the miracle in terms suitable and agreeable to
it, Joshua must have appeared both to have wished a thing,
and expressed it to have been effected in a manner directly
contrary to all rules of science then known ; and his account
of what had happened would have been decried, in the
times he lived in, as false in astronomy, and no great regard
would have been paid to it. It would have appeared rather
a wild fancy or gross blunder of his own, than a true ac-
count of a real miracle ; and so have been but little attended
to by the persons for whom, and in the ages which suc-
ceeded that in which it was written. 4. We do not read
in the sacred text that God declared the sun and moon to

290 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

have stood still upon this occasion : we may suppose that
God might intimate to Joshua, that he would grant him a
miraculous prolongation of the day, if he would, at the
head of his army, ask publicly for it b . Hereupon Joshua
made his request in such terms as, according to his own
conceptions, were proper to be used to ask such a miracle :
" May the sun," said he, " stand still upon Gibeon, and the
" moon in the valley of Ajalon." This he thought must
have been caused, if such a length of day, as he was ordered
to require, was to be given to him. God heard his request,
and gave him the thing he was to ask for ; a day of near
twice the length of any other. The historians of the times
recorded the fact according to what it appeared to be to
them, and agreeably to what was then thought to be true
astronomy ; and, accordingly, the sun and moon appearing,
and being thought for several hours together, not to have
moved forward in their courses, both the author of the book
of Jasher c afterwards, and Joshua now in his history, relate
to us, that the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, and hasted
not to go down about a whole day. And, 5. we may reason-
ably suppose, that though Joshua wrote his history under
the direction of a divine assistance, yet that God would not
interpose to prevent his recording this fact in this manner :
for though all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, yet
certainly it is given so no further than is necessary to make
it profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in-
struction in righteousness* ; and the narration of Joshua might
fully answer this the great end of Scripture ; might teach the
Israelites the power of their God to direct and govern the
heavens as he pleased ; might reprove the idolaters of their
vain worship of the sun and moon, whom they fondly called
the king and queen of heaven*, notwithstanding that it did
"not relate the fact exactly according to what might be the
true astronomical manner in which God effected it. The
most judicious writers have agreed, that " the sacred histo-

b Joshua x. 12. e See vol. i. b. v. Jer. vii. 18. xliv.

c Josh. x. 13. 17 25.

d 2 Tim. iii. 16.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 291

tc rians were not usually inspired with the things themselves
" which they related, nor with the very words by which
" they expressed ivhat they have recorded*" Their histories
were wrote, not to satisfy our curiosity, but to be a standing-
proof of a providence to after-ages ; to shew us the care
that God always takes of good people, and the punishments
he inflicts upon the wicked ; to give us examples of piety
and virtue ; and, lastly, to inform us of matters of fact which
tend to confirm our faith . And so far God was unquestion-
ably pleased to direct and assist the composers of them, as to
prevent their inserting in any of their narrations, through
human frailty, any thing that might contradict or disserve
these the purposes for which he incited them to draw up
their compositions. And thus far Joshua appears, in every
part of his history, to have had the benefit of a divine inspi-
ration ; though we have no reason to imagine that God dic-
tated to him the very words he was to write in, or prompted
him to record the miracle we are treating of, otherwise than
his own natural conceptions disposed him to relate it, and
that probably, amongst others, for this great reason; be-
cause, if God had inspired him to have related this fact in
a manner more agreeable to true astronomy, unless he had
also inspired the world with a like astronomy to receive it,
it would rather have tended to raise amongst those who read
it, and heard of it, disputes and oppositions of science falsely
so called, than have promoted the great ends of religion
intended by it.

It may be asked, if the miracle recorded by Joshua was
indeed fact, and one day was hereby made as long as two h ,
could so remarkable a thing have happened without being
observed by the astronomers of all nations? Such a variation
of the sun's setting, as was hereby occasioned in the land
of Canaan, must have made a longer day or a longer night
than was natural in every other part of the habitable world :
a longer day, wherever the sun was visible at the time of

f Lowth's Vindication of the Divine the Inspiration of the holy Scriptures,

Authority and Inspiration of the Old p. 28.
and New Testament, p. 220. h Ecclus. xlvi. 4.

S Id. p. 221. Five Letters concerning

VOL. IT. U

CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

Joshua's making his request, and a longer night in every
part of the opposite hemisphere. Astronomy was studied in
these times with great application in many nations 1 , and
observations of the heavens were taken and recorded with
as much exactness as the professors of that science were ca-
pable of attaining to ; and is it probable, that, if so remark-
able an alteration of the course of day and night, as this
was, had really happened, we should not find some hint or
remain of some heathen writer to concur with and bear
testimony to the truth of what the sacred historian relates
about it? But in answer hereto let us observe, i. that it is
highly improbable, I might say, morally impossible, that
Joshua should attempt to record such a miracle as this, if it
had not been done ; for every one of his Israelites, as well
as all their enemies, must have known and rejected the
falsity of his narration : and he could never think of making
the world believe a thing so conspicuously false, if it had not
happened. 3. This fact might be recorded not only by
Joshua, and afterwards in the book of Jasher k , but also by
divers other writers of other nations ; and yet what they had
registered about it may easily be conceived not to have
come down to us. The most ancient heathen chronicles
were very short and concise, and in a few ages were disfi-
gured by mythology and false learning 1 ; so as to go down
to succeeding times in a shape and sense quite different from
what was at first the design of them : and the original ac-
counts hereby becoming not suitable to the taste that suc-
ceededj were soon neglected, and in time lost. But, 3. if
we could unravel the ancient fables, we should find that
the fact of there having been one day in which the course of
the sun had been irregular, had been indeed conveyed down
in the memoirs of the heathen literature : Statius had
heard of it, and supposed it to have happened about the time
of the Theban war, when Atreus made an inhuman banquet of

See vol. i. book v. vol. ii. book vi. 6o\oyov<riv 5e? rwv vpoeiprj/JLevcov
viii. fj-oveveiv, nal wfev ofccrflai TOVTWV Ae-

k Josh. x. 13. yfcrQcu yeyovbs ovrea /col i

1 See vol. ii. b. viii. "Orav ovv a n\i- Plut. de Isid. et Osirid.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 293

Thyestes's children" 1 . Other writers imagined it to have
been in the days of Phaeton ; and Ovid has beautified the
fable told of him, that it was he that occasioned it, by hav-
ing obtained leave to guide the chariot of the sun for that
day, which he was in no wise able to manage. And thus
the heathen poets and mythologists dressed up and disfi-
gured the hints which they found in ancient records. Atreus
was father of Agamemnon, and lived but a generation before
the Trojan war, and therefore the sun's standing still in
the days of Joshua could not have happened in his time ;
so that Statius, or any writer from whom he took the hint,
were not true in their chronology. But Phaeton lived much
earlier ; he was son of Tithonus n , who was the son of Ce-
phalus , the son of Mercury P, who was born of Maia the
daughter of Atlas *: Atlas lived about A.M. 2385*: his
daughter Maia might have Mercury by Jupiter about
A.M. 2441, about the 2oth year of Jupiter's age 8 : Mer-
cury at 25 years old might beget Cephalus about A. M.
2466 : Cephalus at 30 beget Tithonus A. M. 2496 : Titho-
nus at 34 beget Phaeton, who would thus be born about
A. M. 2530. The sun stood still in the days of Joshua,
A.M. 2554* : Phaeton was then about 24 years old, a young
man, not of age to guide the chariot of the sun. And thus
the time of Phaeton's life may synchronize with the year
of the sun's standing still in the days of Joshua ; and the
fable told of him might have its first rise from a fact re-
corded to have happened in his youth, dressed up and diver-
sified with the various fictions of succeeding mythologists,
until it was brought to what Ovid left it. But, 4. if we go
into China, we may there find something more truly histo-

m Stat. in Thebaid. lib. i. 325. of Crotopus. Stromat. lib. i. c. 21.
lib. iv. 307. And so does Tatian. Orat. ad Gnec.
n Apollodor. lib. iii. c. 13. c. 60. Crotopus was the eighth king
Ibid. of Argos. Castor. Euseb. Chron. Cro-
P Ibid. topus, I think, died about A. M. 2525 ;
q Id. lib. eod. c. 10. so that Clemens Alexandrinus and Ta-
r See vol. ii. b. viii. tian seem to place Phaeton about 30
s Jupiter was born A.M. 2421. See years earlier than Joshua's command-
book x. ing the Israelites. But 30 years is no
* Clemens Alexandrinus supposes great variation in the chronology of
Phaeton to have lived about the times these times.

u 2

294 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

rical relating to the fact before us. The Chinese records
report, that in the reign of their emperor Yao the sun did
not set for ten days together, and that they feared the world
would be set on fire u : Yao, according to Martinius, was
the seventh emperor of China, Fohi being the first : and,
as he computes, from the first year of Fold's reign to Yao's
are 587 years; for Fohi reigned 115 years x , after him Xin-
num 140?, Hoang-ti ioo z , Xao-haon 84 a , Chuen-hio 78 b ,
Cou 70, and next to him succeeded Yao d . The first year
of Fohi's reign in China was A.M. 1891 ; count down
from hence 587 years, and the first year of Yao will be
A.M. 2479: Yao reigned 90 years to A.M. 2569 f . The
year in which the sun stood still, in the days of Joshua, was
A. M. 2554, in about the 75th year of Yao's reign. And
thus what is recorded in the Chinese annals synchronizes to
the fact related in Joshua. The Chinese records are said to
report that the sun did not set for ten days ; but I suspect
our European writers have not here exactly hit the meaning
of the Chinese annals, and that the word they have translated
days, may perhaps rather signify a space of time little more
than one of our hours : if so, the sacred historian and the
Chinese annalist agree minutely in their time of the duration
of this miracle e. If the sun's not setting at this time was
thus observed in China, we may guess about what time of
day Joshua desired this miracle : and we may be sure it was
not towards the evening, as some writers have imagined h ;
for had the day been almost over in Canaan, the sun would
have been set in China before the miracle happened, and
therefore could not have been there observed at all 1 : it was
therefore a little before noon in Canaan when Joshua desired

u Per hsec tempora diebus decem f Martin, ubi sup.

non occidisse solem, orbemque confla- Josh. x. 13. The sun hasted not

graturum mortales timuisse scribunt. to go down about a whole day. One

Martini! Histor. Sinic. lib. i. p. 37. day was as long as two, Ecclus. xlvi.

x Id. pag. 21. 4. i. e. The sun was stopped about ten

y Pag. 24. or twelve hours, the space of about a

z Pag. 25. natural day.

a Pag. 32. h Cleric. Comment, in loc.

b Pag. 33. i Geographers know that the day

c Pag. 35. begins and ends four or five hours ear-

d Pag. 36. Her in China than in Canaan.
See vol. ii. b. vi.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 295

the sun might be stopped, and about this time the sun might
be seen by Joshua in such a position as to seem to stand over
Gibeon k , or, as it is expressed in the next verse, in the midst
of heaven 1 / and it would be afternoon in China at this time
of day in Canaan. If the Chinese saw and observed this
miracle, then the light of day, which the Israelites were
favoured with, was occasioned by the sun's really not going
down as usual, and not from a vapour or aurora shining in
the air, as Le Clerc and some others have imagined" 1 ; for
such a vapour would not have been seen from Canaan to
China, and could not possibly have appeared near the time
of sunset in both countries, nor would it have occasioned
the heat that was felt in divers parts of the world during
the time of the miracle. The Chinese annals intimate, that
it was feared the earth would have been set on fire : the my-
thologists relate a conflagration to have really happened;
and Ovid paints a poetical scene of it, as his fancy prompted
him n ; and unquestionably the continuance of the sun in one
position in the heavens, for about ten hours together, must
affect with a very intense heat even places not under his
meridian height all that time. The Israelites would pro-
bably have been greatly incommoded with the warmth of
such a day, if God had not been pleased to give a tempera-
ture to the air proper to relieve them, and perhaps suitable
to the producing the prodigious hail, which he caused at
this time to afflict the Canaanites . I am sensible that such
a suspension or retardation of the motion of the earth, moon,
and perhaps of the other heavenly bodies that have relation
to them, as is necessary to cause this miracle in the manner
I imagine it to have been effected, may be calculated to be
naturally productive of consequences fatal to our system : but
then I cannot but think it easy to answer in this matter;
that if we have sufficient reason to induce us to believe that
God really wrought this miracle, it is not hard to conceive
the great Ruler of the universe not only able to direct it
beyond what we can imagine, but also as abundantly able

k Josh. x. 12. n Ovid. Metam.

1 Ver. 13. o Josh. x. n.

m Comment, in lib. Jos. in loc.

296 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

so to uphold all things by the word of his power -P, during the
time of it, as to have no other effect follow than what he
proposed to have done in the world. One design of the
mighty works which God was pleased to do before his
chosen people, was, if men would have paid a due attention
and regard to them, to offer a reasonable conviction for the
earth's being filled with the glory and knowledge of the
Lord^. What they might have Known of God, even his eternal
power and godhead, he had at divers times, and in various
manners, before shewed unto them by the things which he had
done* from the creation of the world" 5 : but as these things
had, ere this age, lost their influence in almost all nations,
and the world was departed from the living God to go after
the sun, moon, and stars, to serve them ; what could there
have been done more remarkably worthy of God's infinite
power, to shew himself to be a God above all gods, than to
have the sun and moon made to stand still in favour of his
declared will, to support a people chosen to be distinguished
by his worship ? The time of day in Canaan, when this mi-
racle happened, was such, that the sight of it could not
but go forth through all the then known nations of the
earth ; so that there could be no speech nor language^- where,
had a due inquiry been made into it, the voice of it would
not have been heard; powerfully proclaiming, that however
the world had been falsely amused with the beauty, or
astonished at the imagined power of the lights ofheaven u ; yet
that there was a Being, who ruleth in the heavens, higher
than them all, and who could overrule and dispose of any
of them as he pleased.

After the defeat of the army of the five kings, Joshua re-
duced the nations of the south parts of Canaan ; and, having
broken every opposition that could here make head against
him, he marched his victorious forces back to Gilgal x .

Upon Joshua's return to Gilgal, Jabin king of Hazor, a
city of great figure and command in the north parts of Ca-

P Heb. i. 3. * Psalm xix. 3.

q Numb. xiv. 21, u Wisdom xiii. 3, 4.

r Tois iroi-fi^atri. * Josh. X. 28 43.
6 Rom. i. 19,, 20,

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 297

, sent unto the kings of the nations round about him,
and proposed to them to unite their forces, in order to act
with their whole strength against the Israelites 2 . The kings
he sent to agreed to his proposal, made their levies, and
came together a numerous and well-appointed army a : they
rendezvoused at the waters of Merom b . Joshua, on the other
hand, led the Israelites against them, under a special promise
of God's assistance and protection ; and gave them battle,
and obtained a great victory d . After having given them this
defeat, he turned back, took the city Hazor, and burnt it to
the ground 6 . From Hazor Joshua marched against the cities
of the other kings, and in time became master of all this
country f ; but it was the work of some years for him to
reduce these nations s. In about five years he entirely sub-
dued them h ; and having now triumphed over, in all, one
and thirty kings 1 , and obtained the Israelites full room to
settle their families in all parts of the land, he was ordered
to put an end to the war k . Caleb the son of Jephunneh
was forty years old when Moses sent him as one of the spies
into the land of Canaan 1 ; the spies were sent into Canaan,
after the tabernacle was erected, in the second year of the
exit m , A. M. 2514. Caleb was now, at the finishing of the
war, eighty-five 11 ; so that the war was finished A. M. 2559,
I suppose towards the end of the year. Joshua passed over
Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, A. M. 2554,
and began the war by the siege of Jericho a few days after.
From this time to about the end of the year 2559, are near
six years ; and so long was Joshua engaged in his wars against
the Canaanites. Almost one year was employed in his first
campaign in the south parts of Canaan P; the other five were
spent against the king of Hazor and his confederates 4.

Upon giving over the war, Joshua was directed by God

y Josh. xi. 10. h Joseph. Antiq. lib. v. c. I.

z Ver. i 3. * Josh. xii. 24.

a Ver. 4. k Ch. xiii. i 7.

b Ver. 5. l Ch. xiv. 7.

c Ver. 6. m See book xi. p. 298.

d Ver. 7 9. n Josh. xiv. 10.

e Ver. 10, n. o Ch. iv. 19.

f Ver. 12 17. P Ch. vi x.

S Ver. 1 8. 1 Ch. xi,

298 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

to apply himself to the dividing the land of Canaan amongst
the Israelites 1 ". Moses, before he died, had fixed the inherit-
ance of two tribes and an half tribe on the other side Jor-
dan 5 : there remained nine tribes and an half to be now
settled 1 ; and unto these Joshua and Eleazar the priest, and
the heads of the tribes, were preparing to set out their in-
heritance. But before they began to make division of the
land, the children of Judah came to them, and Caleb, who
was of this tribe, represented that Moses had made him a
solemn promise, which might determine the place of his
particular inheritance 11 . When the spies were sent by Moses
into Canaan, they went to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai,
and Talmai, the children of Anak, were* ; and at their return
they took occasion from the largeness of the stature of these
men to fill the camp with fears that the Israelites would
never be able to make their way into the country ?. But
Caleb endeavoured to animate the people with better hopes 2 ;
whereupon, when God pronounced against the congregation
that the men who had seen his miracles and glory should
not come into the land, but should die in the wilderness*,
he was pleased to promise that Caleb should be brought
[el ha aretz, asher ba shammah] into the land, to the very
place he went to b , and that his seed should possess it c .
Now Hebron was the particular place they went to, and
from whence they brought home the fears which had so
disturbed the camp d , for faithfully endeavouring to quell
which, Caleb had this particular promise made to him e ; and
upon this account Caleb argued, that this was the place at
which God liad promised that he should be settled; adding
withal, that though the very men were then in possession
of it who had so terrified his companions, yet that he should

* Josh. xiii. x Numb. xiii. 22.

s Ch. xiii. 8,32. Numb. xxxiL Deu* . y Ver. 33.

iii. 12 17. z Ver. 30. xiv. 6.

t Josh. xiii. 7. a Ch. xiv. 22, 23.

Ch. xiv. 69. b Ver. 24. The Hebrew words are,

vnam

illuc adiit quam in terram et introducam eum
ad ipsum locum illam

Numb. xiv. 24. d Vid. loc. supr. citat. e Numb. xiv. 24.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 299

not at all doubt, but be enabled to eject them f . Joshua
admitted the plea of Caleb, and appointed his inheritance
at Hebron &, and then allotted the tribe of Judah the country
from Hebron to Kadesh-barnea, as described in the i5th
chapter of the book of Joshua. Next after Judah the chil-
dren of Joseph were allotted their inheritance 11 ; and we
have in the i6th and iyth chapters of Joshua a particular
account of the boundaries of the lands assigned to them,
namely, to the tribe of Ephraim, and to the half tribe of
Manasseh, which was to inherit on this side Jordan 1 . The
families of this tribe and half tribe were settled on the north
side the country, wherein the camp of the Israelites, which
was formed at Gilgal, rested, as the tribe of Judah was
settled on the south of it ; so that the camp was, as it were,
secured on either side from any sudden irruption : and having
proceeded thus far, the whole congregation assembled at
Shiloh, within the confines of the tribe of Ephraim k , and
there set up the tabernacle 1 .

Josephus seems to represent the tabernacle to have been
erected before they began to divide the land m : but this I
should think a mistake ; for when they began to part the
land, there were nine tribes and an half tribe that had no in-
heritance". But at the time of erecting the tabernacle, seven
tribes only were not provided for . Two tribes and an half
tribe, besides those who were to inherit on the other side Jor-
dan, had had their countries assigned to them according to what
is above represented, as the book of Joshua very plainly in-
timates. Thus far therefore the Israelites had proceeded;
but they began to find difficulties in the method they were
taking: to Judah they had given too large a country P, and
Ephraim and the half tribe of Manasseh were not satisfied
with what was allotted them !: and for this reason, I ima-

f Josh. xiv. 12. Josh. xvii. 5.

S We must here remark, that the k See Judges xxi. 1 9.

city of Hebron was not the property 1 Josh, xviii. i.

and inheritance of Caleb ; for Hebron m Joseph. Antiq. lib. v. c. i .

was one of the Levitical cities. Caleb's n Josh. xiv. 2. xiii. J.

inheritance consisted of some fields Ch. xviii. 2.

near adjoining to this town. See Josh. p Ch. xix. 9.

xxi. n, 12. <l Ch. xvii. 14.

h Josh. xvi. \, &c.

300 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

gine, they now set up the tabernacle. Their enemies were
so far subdued, and the place where they were to fix it so
surrounded with the settlements already made, that they
had no reason to fear any sudden invasion to oblige them to
take it down again r : and, by having the tabernacle erected,
they would have power to apply to God for his immediate
direction in all difficulties 8 ; so as both to prevent mistakes
in their division of the land, and to leave no pretence for
any tribe's being dissatisfied at the lot that should be as-
signed to them.

The directions which God had given for the division of the
land were these; i. They were to divide the land by lot 1 :
each tribe was to have that portion of it which by lot should
fall to him u . 3. When the lot of a tribe was fallen, the land
so allotted to that tribe was to be divided amongst the several
families of it x ; and this, I think, was to be done partly by
the lot?, and but in part by it. When they began to set
out the particular inheritances of families, they threw the
lot which family they should settle first, which next, and so
on : and thus every man's inheritance would be in the place
where his lot fell 2 . But the place of it being thus fixed, they
did not cast the lot for the quantity to be assigned to a fa-
mily; for they were to set out more or less land to each
family, according to the number of the names of the persons
belonging to it a . 3. Every private person was to have his
inheritance within the bounds of the country assigned to the
tribe b he belonged to. 4. To prevent disputes or uneasi-
nesses in or from the choice of the persons who were to
manage and direct the division, God had expressly named
who should divide the land unto the children of Israel c;
and, 5. he had also set them their bounds, described how
far every way the land reached which was to be divided by
them d . We may now examine what method Joshua and

* Josh, xviii. i. z Numb, xxxiii. 54.

s See Exod. xxix. 42, 43. a Ibid.

t Numb, xxxiii. 54. xxvi. 55. b Ibid.

u Ibid. c Ch. xxxiv. 1729.

x Ibid. d Ver. 3 12.

y Ch. xxvi. 56.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 301

the princes of the congregation took, when they began to
execute the commission herein given to them.

And, I imagine, in the first place they cast lots to know
what tribe they should begin with in making the division :
and the lot came out for the tribe of Judah. The next
question that could arise, must be where they should settle
this tribe ; and here Caleb offered his claim to have his in-
heritance at Hebron e , the admitting which seems to have
rendered all further inquiry about the situation of the
country to be assigned to this tribe superfluous, and also to
have led the Israelites to set out a tract of land for them,
more at random, perhaps, than they would otherwise have
done. The journey of the spies, upon which Caleb's claim
was founded, began from Kadesh-barnea f . Caleb's claim did
not aim at any thing higher up into the country than
Hebron : if Caleb was fixed here, the tribe he belonged to
was to be settled contiguous to him. The tribe of Judah
was the most numerous of all the tribes ; it mustered 76000
men of twenty years old and upwards, when the sum of the
congregation was taken in the plains of MoabS; and conse-
quently a pretty large country would be necessary for it.
And these considerations seem to have induced them to set
out at adventure for this tribe all the land between Kadesh-
barnea and Hebron, according to the description and bounds
that are given of it h . Having thus fixed the tribe of Judah
their country, they proceeded to allot each family a proper
share and portion in it ; but when they had done this, they
found that the part of the children of Judah was too much for
them' 1 . After each family of the tribe had received an in-
heritance as large as they could be conceived to have occa-
sion for, there remained a tract of the country to spare, and
undisposed of; and this could not but suggest to the di-
viders, that if they did not go into some stricter method for
the setting out the assignments to the several tribes, they
might in time be brought into difficulties : they might set
out to the tribes, which were first provided for, too much of

e Josh. xiv. 6. h Josh. xv.

f Numb, xxxii. 8. Josh. xiv. 7. i Ch. xix. 9.

Ch. xxvi. 22.

302 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

the land, and not leave enough for those whose lot might
come up to be last settled : and accordingly, in their next
appointment, they appear to have a little altered their method
of proceeding. For,

Here I think they first set out such a quantity of the land
as they thought the country of Canaan might afford for a
tribe : then for the eight tribes and an half they made eight
lots, assigning but one lot to the tribe of Ephraim and half
tribe of Manasseh, considering them under one appellation,
namely, as the children of Joseph k . After this, they cast
the lots to determine who should have the inheritance put
up to be disposed of: the lot of the children of Joseph came
out for it 1 . That but one lot was here made for the sons of
Joseph appears evidently from their complaint to Joshua:
The children of Joseph spake unto Joshua, saying, Why hast thou
given me but one lot, and one portion to inherit ? The children
of Joseph here concerned were more than a tribe ; they were
a tribe and an half tribe, and in all respects a flourishing
people" ; and they thought that they ought not to have been
put thus together, and represented in but one lot, when, if
they had been a tribe only, one lot would have been assigned
to them. And this complaint of the sons of Joseph inti-
mates also that the quantity of land, which the lots were
cast for, was settled, and the bounds of it agreed upon be-
fore the lots were cast for it ; otherwise the complaint would
have been groundless; for if this had not been the case,
where would have been the hardship of the sons of Joseph's
being represented by but one lot, when the dividers of the
land might, upon finding them to be the persons to be pro-
vided for, have set them out as much land, and half as much
land, as they would have portioned out to a tribe, if the lot
of a single tribe had come up upon this occasion ? But herein
the sons of Joseph argued the inequality of the procedure.
A tract of land was set out for the inheritance of a tribe : in
the lots they were represented but as a tribe ; and hereby
they received not a portion and an half portion, which they

k Josh. xvi. i. m Josh. xvii. 14.

1 Ver. i 4. n Ver. 15, 17.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

might think they had a just claim to, but one single portion
only ; for any other single tribe, if their lot had come up
for it, would have had all the country which was assigned to
them. After it was determined what country the sons of
Joseph were thus to have, it remained to consider how to
divide it to their families : and herein the lot was to be
usedP; and the dividers, having perhaps fixed where they
would begin to set out the lands, might cast the lots to know
whether they should settle the families of Ephraim first, or
of Manasseh. They began, I think, in the parts nearest to
the camp, with the families of Ephraim q ; and having pro-
vided for them in order as their lot directed 1 ", and given
them each family a greater or a lesser inheritance, as the
number of persons belonging to it required 8 , there remained
the portion to be divided to the half tribe of Manasseh 1 ,
which they distributed to them in like manner": adding to
them, over and besides the residue of what was first allotted,
some tracts of land taken from the coasts, that were after-
wards assigned to the tribes of Asher and Issachar x ; for
upon their repeated remonstrances 7 Joshua did indeed con-
fess that they were a great people, and that one lot only was
not altogether enough for them 7 .

There were seven tribes to be still provided for a ; but be-
fore they proceeded any further, the whole congregation
assembled at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle b : and then
Joshua proposed to the people to name to him seven men,
one out of each tribe, that he might send them out to sur-
vey the country that remained still to be divided . "What
was already done he was for having ratified and confirmed ;
that Judah should abide in their coasts on the south, and the
house of Joseph in their coasts on the north d ; each of these were
to keep what had been assigned to them: and the persons
appointed to make the survey of the lands not yet disposed

o Josh. xvii. 14. x Josh. xvii. n.

P Vid. quse sup. 7 Ver. 14, 16.

q Josh. xvi. 5. z Ver. 17.

r Vid. quse sup. a Ch. xviii. i.

s Numb, xxxiii. 54. b Ver. i.

t Josh. xvii. 2. c Ver. 4.

u Ver. 7, &c. d Ver. 5.

304 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

of, were to cast their survey into seven parts, and to bring
their accounts of it in a book to Shiloh, where Joshua pur-
posed to have the lots thrown before the Lord, at the taber-
nacle, to determine to each tribe his part of it e . The pro-
posal was received with an universal approbation : the men
were appointed, and brought in their survey, and Joshua
cast the lots in Shiloh, before the Lord*, and divided the land
according to their divisions %; that is, he made no alterations
in any of the seven parts, which the men that took the sur-
vey had agreed upon ; but each tribe, as their lot came up,
had the country for which the lot was drawn, as the sur-
veyors had described it.

From the account we have in the book of Joshua of the
order and part of the country in which each of these seven
tribes were settled 11 , we may easily apprehend in what
manner the lots were drawn for them. First, it was agreed
to draw for the land that lay between Judah and the sons of
Joseph ; the countries where the camp had been so long at
Gilgal; and this fell to the tribe of Benjamin'. The second
lot was cast for the land that remained over and above what
was occupied by the tribe of Judah ; and this fell to the
tribe of Simeon k . The third lot was for a tract of land
which at one end was bounded by the sea of Tiberias ; and
this fell to the tribe of Zebulun !. Fourthly, they drew for
the land between Zebulun and the sons of Joseph ; and this
fell to the tribe of Issachar m . The fifth lot gave to Asher
the country next to the north extent of the land to be di-
vided". The sixth lot assigned to Naphtali a country east
to Asher . And the last lot remained for Dan, and placed
him upon the coasts of the Philistines P. It is remarked,
that the coast of the children of Dan went out too little for
them^ ; an observation probably not made by Joshua : the
words that follow it hint the expedition which the Danites
made afterwards against Leshem ; Therefore the children of

e Josh, xviii. 6. 1 Josh. xix. 10.

f Ver. 9. m Ver. 17.

S Ver. 10. n Ver. 24.

h Ver. ii. to ver. 48. of_chap. xix. Ver. 32.

i Ch. xviii. ii. P Ver. 40.

k Ch. xix. i. Q Ver. 47.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 305

Dan went up to fight against Leshem, and took it, and smote it
with the edge of the sword, and possessed it, and dwelt therein,
and called it Dan, after the name of Dan their father*. These
words cannot be supposed to have been written by Joshua,
for they speak of an expedition not made until after his
death 8 ; and therefore I should think this whole verse an
addition to the sacred pages, made in the manner of some
others, which I have observed to be of a like nature 1 . The
children of Dan were indeed a large people ; they mustered
64400 men of twenty years old and upwards, when the poll
was taken in the plains of Moab u : Judah only was a bigger
tribe. But I should not imagine that the surveyors of the
land had made their assignments so injudiciously as to have
any very remarkable disproportion appear in any of them :
the coast of Dan was too little for them*, probably not that
the country assigned them was not in itself large enough to
receive and produce an abundant provision for all their fami-
lies, but because all their inheritance did not fall unto themY.
The Philistines were in their full strength 2 , and part of their
territories were in this country a , and the Amorites possessed
other the most fruitful parts of it b ; so that the children of
Dan had, comparatively speaking, possession of but a small
part of what was intended to be their inheritance, and we
do not find that they enlarged themselves c; and therefore,
as their families increased, they must have been in straits in
a country of which they had so imperfect a tenure : other-
wise, from the fruits d and pasturage of this part of Canaan e ,
not to mention that they had undoubtedly corn-fields as
well as their neighbours on their very borders f, nor to sug-
gest how many of the tribe of Dan might abide in ships ^, and
have the advantages of employment in a sea-life ; we may
judge, that had a full possession of their whole allotment

r Josh. xix. 47. a Compare Josh. xix. 43. with xiii.

Judg. xviii. 3. i Sam. v. 10. vi. 16, 17.

t See Prideaux, Connect, part i. b Judg. i. 35.

book v. c Ch. i. 34, 35.

u Numb. xxvi. 43. d Numb. xiii. 24.

x Josh. xix. 47. e Gen. xxxviii. 13.

y Judg. xviii. 2. f Judg. xv. 5.

z Josh. xix. 2. S Ch. v. 17.

306 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

fallen to them, a mighty and a great people might have
flourished and increased in it.

The sacred writer has given us a very particular account
of the bounds and extent of the country assigned to each
tribe h ; but we cannot hope to be able to trace out their
borders with the same exactness : Canaan must have been too
much altered from what it was in the days of Joshua, for
perhaps the Jews themselves in their later days to have
found the face of things that in these times appeared in it.
Ten of the twelve tribes of Israel were lost in the captivity ' l ;
two tribes only, Benjamin and Judah, with some few fami-
lies of the other tribes incorporated with them, returned
from Babylon k : and the number that returned was compa-
ratively so small 1 , that if all Canaan had been restored to
them, they would in nowise have been sufficient to enter
upon a full possession of what had been the inheritance of
the twelve tribes in their several divisions of it. Judea
alone was a country more than large enough for them, and
they were obliged to contrive means that Jerusalem itself
should not want people m . In this state of things the country
of the ten tribes might not be much inquired after : other
nations of people were become the possessors of it n , and the
bounds of the inheritances that had formerly been known
in it might be, in a few ages, not to be ascertained with a
great exactness, even before the times of a very late poste-
rity. And accordingly, I think, we find not only Adri-
chomius, and other modern chorographers, giving us, in
many particulars, very confused and unscriptural accounts
of the situation of divers of the ancient towns of these coun-
tries ; but even Josephus himself rather able to say at large
whereabouts each tribe had been placed, than to describe
with exactness the borders of their situations. He represents
Zebulun to have had his country from the lake Gennesaret
to mount Carmel, and to the seaP ; but we cannot, I think,

h Josh. xiii. xv. xvi. xvii. xviii. xix. Walton, in Prolegom. ad Bibl.

i Prideaux, Connect, p ii. b. ii. Polyglot.

k Id. book iii. P ZafivXtovlrai 5e T^V pfXP 1 ^fwiffa-

1 Id. ibid. piriSos, KaO'fiKovffav 5e -jrepl K.dp/j.i]\ov

m Nehem. xi. ical Od\affffav <E\O.XOV. Joseph. Antiq.

n Prideaux, ubi sup. 1. v. c. i. .22.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 307

conceive this tribe to have had this situation : that the
country of Zebulun touched upon Gennesaret is indeed con-
firmed by St. Matthew q ; but how shall we extend it from
thence to Carmel and to the sea ? Asher reached to Carmel
westward 1 "; Ephraim and Manasseh met together in Asher
on the north 8 . The only point where these two tribes could
thus meet must be at the sea at Carmel*; but they could
not meet in this point, if the land of Zebulun lay here be-
tween them. I might observe further: Zebuluns inherit-
ance, according to what Jacob had prophesied of him, was
to reach, not unto Carmel, but unto Zidon u ; and un-
doubtedly, according to this account of what was to be his
border, his portion was in due time assigned to him. We
must therefore suppose the inheritance of this tribe to have
been extended from Gennesaret, between the lands of Asher
and Naphtali, up to the northern extent of Canaan ; and in
this manner the border of Zebulun might indeed be unto
Zidon. Zidon was a town, perhaps, not of Zebulun, but of
Asher x ; Zebulun's country then reached only to the borders

ofity.

When Joshua, and the persons in commission with him,
had made an end of dividing the land for inheritance by their
coasts 2 - , the children of Israel gave an inheritance to Joshua:
they gave him the city which he asked, even Timnath-Serah in
mount Ephraim; and he built the city, and dwelt therein*.
What he asked for was in a situation not occupied by any
to whom inheritances had been given, for it was in mount
Ephraim ; probably in that part of the hill, of which Joshua
had observed to his people, that it was a wood, and that they
might cut it down, and open to themselves an enlargement
of their borders in the outgoings of it b . If Timnath-Serah
was a town before Joshua built it, it might perhaps be an

q Matt. iv. 13. Zebulun this situation agrees to an-

r Josh. xix. 26. other hint of Joshua's j that Zebulun

s Ch. xvi. 10. lay east, or to the sun-rising of Asher.
t Any map of the country will offer Josh. xix. 27.

this to view. z Josh. xix. 49, 50.

u Gen. xlix. 13. a Ibid,

x Josh. xix. 27, 28. b Ch. xvii. 18.

y I might observe, that the giving

VOL. II. X

308 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

old ruinated village, that had been long evacuated in this
wild and overgrown country ; so that Joshua asked a property
such as might give him an opportunity of being an example
to his tribe for the improving their inheritance, to instruct
them how to make their allotment commodious for them :
Joshua built the city, and dwelt therein. In so commanding a
situation we may conceive him to have formed, as it were, a
new and beautiful country round about him, and to have
planted himself not inelegantly, and agreeably to a taste,
which the ancients of almost all countries were not strangers
to in their early times .

The inheritances being fixed, the Israelites appointed the
six cities of refuge, and agreed upon the cities to be set out
in every tribe for the Levites to dwell in d j and all things
being hereby settled for the Israelites of all the tribes en-
joying their respective possessions in all parts of the land,
Joshua called together the Reubenites, Gadites, and the
half tribe of Manasseh, whose inheritances were on the other
side Jordan, and having made a public acknowledgment of
their assistance to their brethren, and of their having now
punctually fulfilled all that Moses had required of them, he
strictly charged them to resolve most steadfastly to keep the
law; he ordered them their share of the spoil of the con-
quered nations, and dismissed them, in order to their going
home unto their own possessions 6 . The two tribes and an
half drew off from the congregation, and began their march
towards their own country f : and, when they were come to
Jordan, before they passed the river, they built a very large
altar, near the place where the Israelites had formerly come
over into Canaan s, intending to leave here a lasting monu-
ment to all future ages, that they acknowledged themselves
to belong to the tribes in Canaan, and that they had no sepa-
rate altar in their own country ; but that the altar, at which
they were to sacrifice, was on the other side the river, before

c "niKiffe TroAeij piKpaf Kal ffwex^ 5 ^ Josh. xx. xxi.

l TOIS opefftv, oairep ?iv rots ira\aio'is e Ch. xxii. I 8.

oiK-fio-fws (rwf)0r)s, Dionys. Halic. f Ver. 9.

i. c. 12. S Ver. 1 1.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 309

the tabernacle of the Lord their God h . A rumour of what
they were doing soon came to Shiloh, and the congregation
there were greatly alarmed at it 1 : the Israelites in Canaan,
not knowing their intention, were afraid they were setting
up an altar for themselves, and that they intended to fall
off from the worship which the law commanded, and re-
solved upon a war against them, rather than suffer an in-
novation which they apprehended would bring down the
divine vengeance upon all Israel k . Hereupon they sent an
embassy 1 . The two tribes and the half tribe explained their
intention to the princes who were sent to them 1 " ; so that
they returned with an account that gave great satisfaction
to the congregation", who thereupon blessed God that their
brethren were not guilty of the defection from his worship,
which they had imputed to them : and so with great joy
they laid aside the preparations they were making for a
war P.

As the sword of Joshua had been fatal to the Canaanites
wherever he had marched against them ; for we read of all
the nations conquered by him, that he utterly depopulated
them, as the Lord God of Israel had commanded q ; so it is
imagined that many companies fled before him out of every
country, and escaped into foreign lands. Procopius, who
flourished in the time of Justinian, mentions some pillars
near the place where Tangier is now situate, with an in-
scription upon them in old Phoenician letters to this pur-
pose ; WE ARE THE FUGITIVES FROM THE FACE OF JOSHUA

THE ROBBER, THE SON OF NUN r : and the Hebrew writers
tell us, that the whole nation of the Girgashites escaped
into this country 8 . But the sacred historian intimates the
contrary : the Girgashites were one of the nations that
fought with the Israelites 1 . It is not indeed probable that,
in the battles fought by Joshua, every person of every nation

h Josh. xxii. 21 29. q Josh. x. 40.

i Ver. ii 20. r Procop. in Vandalicis. Bochart.

k Ibid. Prsef. in lib. de Colon, et Sermon.

l Ibid. Phoenic.

mVer. 21 29. s Rab. S. B. Nachman. Gem. Hie-

n Ver. 33. rosol. vid. Selden. de Jur. Nat. et Gen-

o Ibid. tium, 1. vi. c. 13.

P Ibid. t Josh. xxiv. n.

x 2

310 CONNECTION OF THE SACEED [BOOK XII.

subdued by him fell by the sword ; some remains of every
kingdom might escape, as ^Eneas and a few Trojans did
in a succeeding age from the ruin of Troy : and if any little
companies in this manner took their flight in Joshua's first
campaign, when he overthrew the kings of south Canaan,
they might make their route by way of Egypt into these
parts of Africa, or they might fly into the land of the Phi-
listines, which was not yet conquered 11 ; and from towns
on these coasts, of repute for their shipping in these days x ,
they might sail for foreign lands; and a voyage from these
parts to Africa was suitable to the skill of these times in the
art of sailing, it fell naturally down along the coast from
Canaan to Egypt, to Libya, and without a necessity of going
a great distance out of sight of shore. Such a voyage Dido
made afterwards from Tyre to Carthage. When Alexander
the Great was to make his entry into Babylon, there were
embassies attending him from divers nations, who had em-
ployed their agents to offer to him a state of their several in-
terests and affairs, and to beg of him to accept an arbitration
of their differences y. Arrian mentions ambassadors from
Africa to have waited upon him at this time z ; and the Tal-
mudical writers say, that the Canaanites above mentioned,
who had fled into Africa, were the people who made him
this compliment, and that their deputies were instructed to
lay before Alexander, how the Israelites had expelled their
ancestors^ and to pray him to restore them back to their old
country again a . But whether this was not a mere fancy of
these writers, and whether Procopius had a sufficient in-
formation of what he related, I cannot determine.

Other writers tell us that Canaan sent out many colonies
into divers parts of the world in these times b ; and Bochart
hints the states of Lesser Asia, of Greece, and the isles in the
JEgean sea, to have received many companies of Canaanites
who fled from their own country : but whoever will duly

u Josh. xiii. 3. a Vid. Gemar. Babylon, ad Tit.

x Judg. v. 17. Sanhed. c. n. f. 91. Selden. de Jure

y Arrian. de Expedit. Alexand. lib. Natural, et Gent. lib. vii. c. 8.
vii. p. 476. ed. Jans. Amstel. 1668. b Vid. Bochart. de Colon, et Serm.

z Id. ibid. Phoenic.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 311

examine the labours of this writer, will find his whole work
upon this subject to offer rather a very learned appearance
of arguments, than true and real argument to support his
opinion. The foreigners who might come from or pass
through Canaan into these countries, came earlier than the
times of Joshua : and of this Bochart himself could not but
feel a conviction in many particulars. There were no revo-
lutions in Greece, or its neighbour islands, that happened
after the days of Joshua, but which may be accounted for
without any migrations from Canaan into these countries. In
like manner the states in Lesser Asia, which were of figure in
the succeeding times, and particularly the kingdom of Troy,
which grew to be the mistress of these parts, were formed
and growing up in their own strength before Canaan was in
trouble : and the wars of Joshua seem to have been so far
from having had any effect which extended itself towards
these countries, that we find nations, through or nigh unto
which great routs of exiles must have passed, if any consi-
derable migrations had been made out of Canaan into Lesser
Asia, in these days, open and unguarded against incursions ;
careless, quiet, and secure, under no apprehensions that any
neighbouring people might want settlements, and be tempted
to dispossess them c , which they could not have been insen-
sible of, if many troops had passed their borders in their
flights to foreign lands. The Israelites had indeed reduced
many kingdoms of Canaan, and divided their countries to
each tribe their share of them ; but they had not so entirely
dissipated and destroyed the inhabitants, but that in a little
time they got again together, formed themselves to a new
strength, and were able to dispute with their conquerors,
whether they should have the towns, which, when pressed
by Joshua to a precipitate flight, they seemed to have eva-
cuated and given up to them d . I must add to all this, that
there were many states and cities of Canaan that stood still in
their strength, unattacked by the Israelites 6 , who were able
afterwards to bring into the field numerous armies f : and to

c Judg. xviii. 7. e Josh. xiii. 2 6,

d Ch. i. i. compared with Josh. xii. f Judg. i. 4.

31 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

these the scattered remains of the nations that were reduced
did undoubtedly fly ; and it is reasonable to imagine that
the cities they fled to might be willing to receive and pro-
vide for them, in order to strengthen themselves by an addi-
tion of people, rather than to have them desert the country
and leave Canaan. It is very probable an increase of people
in this manner was what raised the strength of the Philistines
in a few ages, so as to make them more than a match for all
Israels.

Joshua lived several years after he had fixed the Israelites
their settlements in the land h , and had the satisfaction of
seeing them happy in a scene of great peace and quiet all
the rest of his days. He was now old and stricken in age 1 : and
as he did not expect to be much longer with them, he sum-
moned a congregation of all Israel k ; represented the great
things which God had done for them; observed to them,
how he had been enabled to assign them their inheritance 1 ,
and assured them, that if they would truly and strictly keep
the law, and not associate themselves, contrary to it, with the
nations which as yet were not expelled the land, that God
would certainly, in due time, entirely drive them out, and
give the Israelites a full possession of all Canaan. But, said
he, on the other hand, if ye do not persevere, but shall in-
cline unto the remnant of the nations that are left, and make
marriages and alliances with them, then God will not drive
them out, but the nations with whom ye shall have thus en-
gaged yourselves shall be snares and traps, scourges and
thorns to you"; shall in various ways seduce and incom-
mode, bring distress and calamities upon you, until ye shall
perish from off this good land which the Lord your God
hath given you . I, in a little time, shall die and leave you ;
but suffer me to remind you how punctually hitherto every
good thing has befallen you, which God promised to you ;
and let me tell you, that every evil, which God has threat-

Vid. Lib. Samuel. l Josh, xxiii. 3, 4.

Josh, xxiii. i. m Ver. 5 IT.

Ibid. n Ver. 13.

Ver. 2. o Ver. 15.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 313

ened, will as exactly come upon you, if you transgress the
covenant of the Lord your God P.

Some time after he summoned the tribes to Shechemq,
and sent thitherjfor the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and
for their judges, and for their officers, to attend him before
the Lord r ; where he repeated to them all the mercies which
God had vouchsafed to their fathers and to them, from the
calling of Abraham down to that day 5 : then he desired
them to consider and resolve whether they would indeed
faithfully serve God, or whether they would choose to fall
away to idolatry t. Upon their assuring him that they would
not forsake the Lord to serve other gods u , Joshua reminded
them, that to serve their God was a thing not so easy to be
done as said x : for that God would be strict in demanding
from them a punctual performance of what he had required,
and that if they should be remiss or unmindful of any part of
it, that his vengeance would most certainly fall upon themy.
Hereupon they repeated their resolution to serve the Lord 2 .
Well then, said Joshua, if after all this you do not do it, let
your own declarations this day testify against you. Unto

P Josh, xxiii. 14 16. the heads of the tribes and officers to
9 Ch. xxiv. i. attend him to Shiloh, to present them-.
' Some copies of the LXX. read selves before God. All the tribes of
Shiloh, and not Shechem, in this Israel were gathered to Shechem ; but
place; and as Joshua and the elders not all the tribes, rather the heads,
are said to have presented themselves be- judges, and officers only, presented
fore God, i. e. at the tabernacle, agree- themselves before God. A meeting of
ably to which sense of the expression all the tribes must form a camp, not
it appears, ver. 26. that they were at to be accommodated but in a large
their holding their meeting by or at and open country. Shechem had in
the sanctuary of the Lord ; and as the its borders field enough for the recep-
tabernacle was set up not at Shechem, tion, of all the people. See Gen. xxxiii.
but at Shiloh, chap, xviii. i. it may 19. Here therefore they met, and from
be thought that here is some mistake, hence made such detachments to Shi-
and that Shiloh, not Shechem, was the loh, a place in the neighbourhood, as
place to which Joshua convened the the purposes for which they were con-
tribes of Israel. Some of the critics vened required. Take the fact to have
thought the ark and tabernacle were been thus, and the difficulties which
removed to Shechem against the hold- some commentators surmise in this
ing this convention ; but we have no passage do all vanish,
hints of the fact having been so, nor s Josh. xxiv. 2 13.
occasion to suppose it. Shechem and t Ver. 14, 15.
Shiloh were about twelve miles dis- u Ver. 16 18.
tantfrom one another. Joshua lived at x Ver. 19.
Timnath-Serah, a place almost in the y Ver. 20.
midway between them. He summon- z Ver. 21.
ed the tribes to meet in the fields a Ver 2/2,
of Shechem : from thence he called

314 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [BOOK XII.

this the people readily assented b : and thus did Joshua sum-
mon them to a most strict engagement of themselves, never
to vary or depart from the law which God had given them c :
and, that a lasting sense of what they had in so solemn a
manner agreed to might remain upon them, he wrote what
had passed in the book of the Law d , and set up a pillar in
remembrance of it*, and then dismissed the people. Not
long after Joshua, being an hundred and ten years old, died,
and was buried on the north side of the hill of Gaash, in the
border of his inheritance in Timnath-Serah f . Josephus in-
forms us that Joshua governed the Israelites twenty-five
years from after the death of MosesS; accordingly we must
fix the time of his death to about A. M. 2578.

It has been a matter of dispute amongst the learned, whe-
ther Joshua was himself the author of the book which is
called by his name h . But, T. it is obvious to be observed,
that the book of Joshua seems to hint that a person, one of
the Israelites, who made the miraculous passage over Jor-
dan, was the writer of it: this the first verse of the fifth
chapter intimates to us : When all the kings of the Amorites
heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from
before the children of Israel, until we were passed over V the
writer would not have here used the first person, WE were
passed over, if himself had not been one of the persons who
had passed the river k . 2. It is evident that this book was
written before Rahab died ; for we are told that Joshua
saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and
all that she had ; and she dwelleth in Israel unto this day 1 .
The writer was here willing to record to posterity that
Rahab had not only her life given her, but that she was so
well received by the Israelites as to continue even then to

b Josh. xxiv. 22. i The Hebrew words are,

c Ver. 25. k I ought not to omit that the

d Ver. 26. marginal reference in the Hebrew Bi-

e Ver. 27. bles reads the word nms>; but the

f Ver. 29, 30. learned allow the Hebrew Keri and

g Joseph. Antiq. 1. v. c. i. Ketib not to be of such authority, as

h Vid. Pool. Synop. Critic. Cleric, that we must be absolutely determined

in Dissert, de Scriptorib. Historic. Vet. by it. Walton. Bibl. Polyglot. Pro-

Testam. Carpzov. Introduc. ad Libros legom. viii. c. 26.

Hist. Vet. Test, et al. l Josh. vi. 25.

AND PROFANE HISTORY. 315

dwell amongst them ; a remark that could not have been
made after Rahab was dead m : and consequently the book
that has it must have been composed whilst Rahab was yet
alive. Rahab was afterwards married to Salmon, the son of
Naasson", the head of the house of Judah : had she been
so when the book of Joshua was composed, I should ima-
gine the author of it, as he appears, by the hint above men-
tioned, inclined to intimate all the good circumstances of her
condition, would not have omitted that; and consequently
by her marriage not being mentioned, we have some reason
to think the book of Joshua to have been written not late in
Rahab's life. 3. We are expressly informed that Joshua did
himself write, and add what he wrote to the book of the Law
of Godv. 4. The words that inform us of this fact may, if
taken in their natural sense, and according to the construc-
tion put upon words of the like import, when we find them
upon ancient monuments or remains, be supposed to be
Joshua's conclusion of his book, designed by him to inform
posterity that himself was the writer of it: Joshua wrote
these words in the book of the Law, &c. may fairly imply, un-
less we have good reason to think the fact was otherwise,
that all that was found written in the book of the Law, from
the end of what was penned by the hand of Moses, unto the
close of the period, of which these words are a part, was
wrote by Joshua : and this was the opinion of the Talmud-
istsq. Joshua was the only sacred penman which we read
the Israelites to have had in his age ; and after he had finished
the division of the land, he had many years of great leisure r :
in these he probably applied himself to give account of
the death and burial of Moses 5 , and from thence continued a
narrative of what had been transacted under his own di-
rection 1 , filling it up with a general terrier of the settle-
ments of the tribes 11 , such as it could not but be expedient

m The remark is not that Rahab's Numb. i. 7.

family, descendants, or father's house- P Josh. xxiv. 26.

hold, were then in Israel ; but the Q Bava Bathra, cap. i .

verb is ncm, in the third person fe- r Josh, xxiii. i.

minine, and refers to Rahab in par- s Deut. xxxiv.

ticular. * Josh, i xii.

n Matt, i. 5. Ch. xiii xxii.

316 CONNECTION OF THE SACRED [l3OOK XII.

for the Israelites to have on record, to prevent confusions
about their inheritances in future ages. After having done
this he summoned the tribes*, gave them his exhortations,
and having added to what he had before prepared an ac-
count of the conventions he had held, and what had passed
at them, he transcribed the whole into the book of the lawy,
and then dismissed the people 2 . Accordingly I take the
work of Joshua to begin from where Moses ended ; at the
34th chapter of Deuteronomy, and to end with the 27th
verse of the 24th chapter of Joshua. As Joshua thus added
at the end of Deuteronomy the account of Moses's death,
so what we find from the 28th verse of the 24th chapter of
Joshua to the end of that book was unquestionably not
written until Joshua and all the elders his contemporaries,
who overlived him, were gone off the stage a , and was
added to the end of the book of Joshua by some sacred pen-
man, who was afterwards employed to record the subsequent
state of the affairs of Israel.

As to the objections that are offered against Joshua's
being the writer of the book so called, they are but inconsi-
derable. It is remarked, that there are many short hints and
intimations in divers parts of the book, that appear evidently
of a later date than Joshua's time. Of the stones which
Joshua set up at Gilgal, it is observed that they were there
unto this day^ ; a remark very proper to be made in a distant
age, but not likely to be hinted by Joshua of a monu-
ment designed by him, not so much for his own times, as
for the information of a late posterity . Of the Canaanites
in divers tribes it is suggested, that the Israelites did not
drive them out, but admitted them to live amongst them,
and made them pay tribute d ; and of the tribe of Dan, that
they went up against Leshem e : but this expedition was not
undertaken until after Joshua's death f , nor did the tribes of
Israel come to agreement with the inhabitants of Canaan
whilst Joshua was living ; and therefore all these observa-
nt Josh, xxiii. 2. c Josh. iv. 21, 22.
y Ch. xxiv. 26. d Ch. xiii. 9. xvi. 10.
z Ver. 28. e Ch. xix. 47.
a Ver. 31. f Judg. xviii.
t> Ch. vii. 26. e Ch. i.

AND PROFANE HISTORY.

317

tions must have come, not from Joshua, but from a later
hand. We are told that what Joshua wrote about the sun
and moon's standing still was also found in the book of
Jasher 11 . But the book of Jasher was more modern than
these times : it contained hints of what David desired the
children of Judah might be taught', and therefore was a
book probably not in being until David's age. In like man-
ner a tract of land in the I9th chapter of Joshua is called
Cabul k ; but this country seems not to have had this name
until Hiram called it so in the days of Solomon 1 . I might
add to these some other observations of a like sort 1 " ; but
how obvious is it to reply to all of them, i. That the ob-
servation of Rahab's being alive "suggests the book of
Joshua to have been composed long before any of these
more modern intimations could be given ; and consequently
that none of these could be in the original book of Joshua.
2. The learned are abundantly satisfied that there are many
little strictures and observations of this nature, now found in
divers parts of the sacred books, which were not written
by the composers of the books they are found in . 3. Dean
Prideaux says of them, that they were additions made by
Ezra, when, upon the return from the captivity, he collected
and settled for the Jews a correct copy of their holy Scrip-
tures P. What authority this most learned writer had for this
opinion, I cannot say ; I suspect it proceeded from a desire
to preserve the same regard to these additions and interpo-
lations as is due to the sacred writings ; for, he says, Ezra
was assisted in making these additions by the same spirit
by which the books were at first wrote q : but whether Ezra
made his copy of the Scriptures from original books of them
then extant; or rather, whether he did not make his copy
from collecting and comparing such transcribed copies as
were in the hands of the Israelites of his times ; whether
in the copies he consulted, the additions we are speaking of

h Josh. x. 13. n Josh. vi. 25.

i 2 Sam. i. 1 8. o gee Prideaux, Connect, part i.

k Josh. xix. 27. book v.
l i Kings ix. 13. P Ibid.

mVid. Cleric. Dissertat. de Scrip- Q Ibid,
toribus lib. Histor. Vet. Testam.

318 CONNECTION OF SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY.

might not stand as marginal hints made by private hands in
their copies of the sacred books ; whether Ezra could ever
design either to add to the sacred books, or to diminish
ought from them r ; though perhaps finding divers of these
intimations of use to the reader, for illustrating and com-
paring one part of the sacred writings with another, or sug-
gesting what might explain an obscure or antiquated name
or passage in them, he might take such as he judged thus
serviceable into his copy also ; but whether he made them
part of his text ; or rather, whether he did not insert them
in his copy, as marginal hints and observations only; and
whether their being made, as we now find them, part of
the text, has not been owing to the mistake or carelessness
of later transcribers from Ezra's copy, are points which I
submit, with all due deference, to the judgment of the
learned.

r Prov. xxx. 6.

THE END OF THE THIRD VOLUME.

THE

CREATION AND FALL OF MAN

A SUPPLEMENTAL DISCOURSE

TO THE

PREFACE OF THE FIRST VOLUME

OF THE

SACRED AND PROFANE HISTORY OF THE
WORLD CONNECTED.

THE

PREFACE

A LTHOUGH the ensuing treatise is not of a size or in a
J\ form proper for a part of any preface ; yet I call it a Sup-
plement to the Preface of my first volume of The Sacred and
Profane History of the World connected, because the subject-
matter of it ought, and was intended to have been treated
in that preface ; but was deferred, as I wished to see what
others, who were writing after me a , would offer upon a
subject so variously thought of by divers able and valuable
writers, rather than too hastily offer to the public senti-
ments upon it which I had a just diffidence of, as many of
them seemed to be more peculiarly my own.

A supposed impossibility of reconciling a literal interpre-
tation of Moses's account of the fall of man to any rea-
sonable notions of God, and to what must in truth be his
dispensations towards us b , is, I believe, what has introduced
the notion of explaining some parts at least of his narration
into apologue and fable. The shadow of allegory seems to
give us some appearance of knowing what we do not plainly
understand ; and an unexamined hearsay of eastern sages,
their mythology and literature, amuses us with a colour of
being very learned, whilst perhaps we really mistake the rise
and design of the very literature we have recourse to, in en-
deavouring to resolve into it Moses's narration, which most
evidently sets before us particulars absolutely incapable of
admitting any allegorical interpretation whatsoever.

That the great point of which Moses informs us is of this

a The writers of the Universal His- Fall of Man. See ray preface to vol. i.

tory soon after began to publish their p. xx.

work; and after their account of the b See Middleton's allegorical and

creation, gave us, as I hoped they literal interpretation,
would, what they could collect of the

PREFACE.

sort, absolutely incompatible with allegory, is, I think, evi-
dent beyond contradiction : and I hope the ensuing pages
may as clearly shew of every part of what he has related
upon the subject, that taken literally to be done, as he has
recorded it, the whole very pertinently agreeing to the
great design of all subsequent Scripture, must shew us that,
in all that happened unto our first parents, nothing befell
them improper for their being unto us for ensamples^; and
that the account we have of them, so far from being mythic
or unintelligible, is most plainly written for our admonition;
that we may indeed learn from it, in what manner and mea-
sure from the beginning it was, as it still is, the one thing
needful for man truly and indeed to obey God. All Scripture
is given by inspiration of God ; and is profitable for doctrine,
for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that
the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all
good works e . If, in explaining Moses's narration of the fall
literally, we can shew it to bear evidently all these characters
of holy writ, as I trust from what is to follow it will be
seen to bear them, we shew what must be of more real
weight for a literal interpretation than all that is otherwise
suggested against it.

But though what I have here intimated, and have further
evinced in the ensuing treatise, will make it evident that
Moses did not here write apologue and fables; whether
what I am going to suggest be certain fact or not, yet it
may not be disagreeable to the reader to remark, that the
relating mythologically physical or moral truths concerning
the origin and nature of things, was not perhaps, as modern
writers too hastily imagine, the customary practice of Moses's
age ; but rather began after his times. The poet's rule may
be a very good one to judge even of the style and manner
of authors;

^Etatis cujusque notandi sunt tibi mores. Hor.

And a few intimations may possibly shew us, that a due use
of it may not be altogether of no effect in the inquiry be-
fore us.

The wisdom of the east country, and its eastern sages, were
in high esteem in the days of Solomon f : but it is observed
at the same time, that the wisdom of Egypt stood in com-
petition with it?: there were then western sages as well as
eastern ; and how readily soever eastern sages flows from the

c See hereafter, ch. xi. f i Kings iv. 30.

d i Cor. x. ii. S Ibid,

e 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17.

PREFACE.

323

pen of modern writers, as far as I can find, we must go to
the western ones for the rise of mythologic writing. My-
thology began in Egypt: it was new and recent there in
the times of Sanchoniatho ; the ^cwrarot lepoAoywy, the priests,
who at that time were most modern, had then invented and
introduced it h . Sanchoniatho flourished about A. M. 2760' :
Moses died A.M. 2553 k : in the interval of these 217 years,
we have reason to suppose the rise of mythology.

It is remarkable, that in this interval the correction of the
year was made in Egypt, when Aseth was king there 1 .
Aseth, or Assis, was the sixth Pastor king, the second after
Apophis, who perished at the exit of the Israelites in the Red
sea, A. M. 2513. Assis began to reign at the end of 50
years after the death of Apophis n , i.e. A.M. 2563; the
correction of the year was not until after the beginning of
his reign ; in what time of it we are not told ; he reigned
40 years? : we may well place it towards his death 1, about

h When Sanchoniatho made his in-
quiries, we are told that ol (Mtv vf&raroi
hpo\6ywv ra /J.GV yeyov6ra irpdy^ara.
avTo a\\T)yopias Kal
firivo'f)<rai'Tfs, Kal rots KOV/JLIKO'IS
fvfiav ir\a(rdfj.evoi fjLvffr-fj-
pia KaT(m)(rav, Kal iro\i>i> O.VTOIS firrjyov
Tv<f>ov, &s [A)] paSioas nva avvopuv TO /COT'
aXJiOtiav yf v6/j.fva. Euseb. Prsep. Evang.
lib. i. c. 9.

i Sanchoniatho flourished irb TWV

Euseb. ibid. Troy was taken, accord-
ing to archbishop Usher, A. M. 2820.
according to the Arundel marble 2796.
Agreeably hereto Sanchoniatho is said
to have conversed with Jerombaal, a
priest of the god Jevo, in or near Phoe-
nicia. The country of the Jews was
often taken as a part of Phoenicia. The
four letters of the word Jehovah may
easily be so pointed as to be pro-
nounced Jehvoh. Gideon, who was
also called Jerubbaal, Judges vi. 32.
was a prophet, a ruler, a great deliverer
of his people, under the especial di-
rection of this God, whose name was
Jehovah, mrv, Judges vi viii. With
the heathens, and in the most ancient
times, the ruler was also priest unto
his people; see Connect, vol. ii. b.
vi. so that they might naturally deem
Jerubbaal a priest of the god 'Icuw,
Jevoh, as they pronounced it, from
his having been appointed by Jehovah

VOL. IT.

to rule and govern his people. Mr.
Dodwell indeed wrote a treatise to
prove Sanchoniatho not to have been
thus ancient : but I cannot apprehend
his endeavours to be at all conclu-
sive. Take Jerombaal to be Gideon,
and Gideon to have ended his war
against Midian about A. M. 2760. (see
Usher's Annals,) about that time San-
choniatho might have access to him.
k See Connect, vol. iii. book xiL

p. 229.

1 Alymrricav

vros

'Ao"^0 rov

avrov, &?? (patrlv,
pS>v AlyvTrriaKbs
irpb TOVTOV /j.fTpovfAvos. Syncellus, p.
123. According to Syncellus, Aseth
lived about A. M. 2716. According to
sir John Marsham, we must place him
2665. See Connect, vol. ii. book viii
p. 450. But from the years of the
Egyptian kings, as I deduce them, see
vol. iii. p. 185, his times are from 2563,
to 2603.

m See Connect, vol. iii. b. xi. p.
185, 188.

n Tbid. p. 185.

The reign of Janius, the interme-
diate king between Apophes and Assis,
or Aseth, brings us to begin Assis' s
reign at this year.

P Ibid.

Q Connect, vol. ii. b. viii.

324 PREFACE.

perhaps A. M. 2600 r , which is about 47 years after the death
of Moses 8 ; 22 years after the death of Joshua*.

The fable that is handed down to us, along with the ac-
count of their correction of the year, very significantly points
out that their mythology took its rise from this incident.
They now found out that there were five days in the year
more than they had thought of u , and they mythologized
that five gods were now born, Osiris, Orus, Typho; Isis, and
Nephthe x . They could not mean that these personages now
first began to be ; for they had been, ages before, mighty
and renowned princes in their country ; but they now first
ascribed to them a rule and influence over all things sub-
lunary, by supposing each to be the governing power in
some star, thought to be animated by them. The dog-star
was reputed the orb of Isis Y ; to the others were allotted,
in like manner, their respective spheres 2 ; and the philosophy
of the Egyptians at this time seems to have been exerted in
such a lustration of their year,

eoW\/raro els tviavrbv

Aarepas* Aratus.

as to assign ruling influences of the stars over the several
parts of it, and to suppose their ruling stars animated by
those who had been the early founders and supporters of
their states and cities. What their former theories had
been, shall be mentioned presently. What I would here hint
is, that they now fell into a way of thinking, which the Ro-
man poet took up afterwards to make his court to Germanicus
Caesar ;

Caesaris arma canant alii, nos Csesaris aras,

Et quoscunque sacris addidit ille dies. Ovid. Fast. lib. i.

They consecrated, and placed over their times and seasons,
the venerable personages of their most ancient ancestors,
who had laid the early foundations of all the Egyptian glory
and prosperity; and they hoped, that if they with proper
rites worshipped gods so auspicious,

felix totus ut annus eat, Ovid, ubi sup.

r Assis died 2603. Vide quse sup. . Connect. Pref. to vol. i.

Moses died 2553. x Connect, vol. ii. b. viii. p. 449.

t Joshua died A. M. 2578. Connect. 7 Upon the pillar of Tsis was in-

vol. iii. b. xii. p. 314. scribed, 'E7c6 el/j.i T\ ev Ty-'Affrpcp ry

u The Egyptian year was now first Kwl tiriTc\\ov<ra. Diodor. Sic. lib. i.

computed to be 365 days, being before z Connect, vol. ii. b. viii.
reckoned 360 only. Syncellus ubi sup.

PREFACE. 325

that ages of all national happiness might be renewed to
them.

What had been the more ancient Egyptian theology, the
inquiries of Sanchoniatho declare to us : he, having ex-
amined their ancient records, and set aside all the mytho-
logy that had been induced, gave us their true ancient
dogmata 3 ; and what he has left us evinces that their doc-
trines were, that the origin of things happened from prin-
ciples of nature effectuating, without choice or intelligence,
what blindly by a mechanical event of things arose from
themb. He talks indeed of a TO irvevfjia, what we might
think to call a spirit ; tells us, that it was in love with its
own principles : but his spirit was such an one as a modern
author exhibits to us; a spirit, "which, clothed with one
" set of material organs, is only capable of exerting its in-
" telligence in the performance of attraction or repulsion,
" and, when jarring elements meet, breaks forth in thunder
" and lightning, and earthquakes, or any other mechanical
" operations ; but may, when united to a different set of
" organs of a more exquisite and delicate contexture, be ca-
" pable of exercising voluntary motion, may be enabled to
" think and to reason, to operate in love or hatred, and,
" when provoked by opposition, may be agitated with anger
" and resentment, and break forth in quarrels, contention,
" and war d ." The Egyptian TO Tivev^a, which generated
all things, was an original, like this author's spirit, unto
which though Sanchoniatho ascribes operating principles,
yet he expressly tells us they were insensate 6 , and some-
times caused jarring elements, and broke forth in lightning
and thunders f ; and, what is very wonderful, he also opined
that these unintelligent operating powers produced some
animal beings, which, being alive, but having no thought,
procreated other beings that had both life and intelligence?.
These later productions must be surely conceived, like the
spirit of our modern writer above cited, to have kindled

a 'O 5e ffvfj.0a\&i> TO?? airb rav aSvrcov eK\"fi0r] IIO0O2' avrri

fvpeOe'iffiv airoKpixpois 'Aftfiowtetv ypd/j.- airdt/TW avrb 8e OVK eyivuffKe T^V avrov

fj.affi trtry/cei^eVots, a 8)) UVK -r\v iraffi yvta- Kriffiv. Avrb, if the reader consults the

pip-a., TV /j.dO^o-Li' airavTuv avrbs ^<r/cr?o-e' place, he will see it refers to rb irvtv^a.

Kal reAos firi6tls rrj irpay/jLareia, r'bv /COT' preceding. Euseb. Praep. Evang. lib. i.

apxas pvQov, Kal ras aXXyyopias eiciro- c. 10. in princip.

Shy ironia-dfjifvos, f^vva-aro r^v irp6Qe<riv. f 'EiretSai/ 5te/cpt077, /cot rov ISiov rfaov

Euseb. Preep. Evang. lib. i. c. 9. SiexcoplffOri Sia T V rov f]\tov Trtpwffiv, Kal

b Id. Ibid. c. 10. TTO^TO (rvvf]VTi](re ira\tv fv aepi TaSc roTs

c 'UpdaQri rb Tn/ey/ua T>V iSitov apx&i'. 5e Kal awtppa^av, fipovrai re oTreTeAe-

Id. ibid. oQ-r\aav KOI affrpairai, Euseb. ibid.
<l Essay on Spirit, p. 24, 25. e^Hv 8c nva ua OVK X ovra afofaiffiv,

e 'EywfTo ffvyKpaa-ts y TT\OKT] e/cetVrj e| S>v eyevero ua voepd. Id. ibid.

326 PREFACE.

into cogitation, by having bodies unaccountably formed to
strike out this flame, and without which they could have
made no collisions of a finer nature than what might cause
the voice of thunder, and the flashes of lightning, to be heard
and seen from them. These were the ancient dogmata of
Egypt h ; and it is not so great a wonder they were so, con-
sidering the low state of their rudiments of knowledge : but
that any writer should think of offering sentiments of this
sort in an age of philosophy so clear and intelligible as all,
who know philosophy, are now versed in, is, I confess, to
me most amazing.

But this, as I have said, was, before Moses's age, the wis-
dom of Egypt: Atheistic, sine Deo' 1 , supposing the world to
have been made and governed without a God, by blind and
.unintelligent principles of nature ; and their worship and
religion was according to it. But Moses, though learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians* , was also better instructed;
and taught, in opposition to the Egyptian literature, that
in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and
that without him was not any thing made that was made ] .
And the God, whom Moses had thus declared, had most
amazingly exalted his power against all the gods and reli-
gion of Egypt, by bringing his people, a nation, out of the
midst of and from under their subjection to the Egyptians,
by such signs and wonders, by such a mighty hand and
stretched-out arm; by such amazing miracles, and entire
overthrow of all the strength of Egypt, that if it were asked
of the days that were past, since the day that God created man
upon earth, no such thing as this great thing had ever been,
nor any thing heard like it m . Egypt was destroyed, greatly
diminished, and brought low ; its king and armies over-
whelmed and lost in the Red sea n ; six hundred thousand
slaves, besides women and children, had left this country,
the Egyptians not being able in the least to oppose it. Where
now, and what were the gods of Egypt? their elementary
powers, or sidereal influences? Was it not too plain to be
contradicted, that there was a power that ruled in the hea-

h TaG0' evpeQ-r) eV rrj Koffpoyovia. 76- deluge, the Greeks, copying after the

ypap.fj.4va Taavrov. Euseb. Prsep. E- first rudiments of Egypt, long philo-

vang. 1. i. c. 10. sophized, without supposing any intel-

i See Connect, vol. ii. b. ix. It ligence to have made or govern the

may be thought surprising that it world. Anaxagoras is said to have

should ; but philosophy seems to have introduced this principle : irpOaros rrj

began upon these blind principles in &\y Now eireffT-rjffev. Laert. in Anaxag.

all countries. It appears to have been k Acts vii. 22.

the old way of those of the first world, 1 Gen. i. i. See hereafter, ch. i.

who perished in the flood, see Job xxii. m Deut. iv. 32 34.

15 17. And in later ages, after the n Exod. x. 7. xii. 29, 30. xiv.

PREFACE.

vens, far mightier than they, who disposed of them as he
pleased, and was able to do of himself whatsoever he would
have done in the earth ? Should the Egyptians that re-
mained turn and inquire, and seek after to serve this God ;
would not state-policy, which always has and always will
try to work its way, notwithstanding religion, have herein
prevented them, and offered it to their consideration, whe-
ther, if they took this course, the Israelites might not come
and take away their place and nation ? It seems better to
have satisfied them, to correct their year, and reform their
own system ; and what more likely reform of their religion
might they fall into, than now to consider, that unquestion-
ably they had been wrong in supposing elements to govern
the course of nature, without a personal agent ruling in
them ? But, conceiving the Israelites to have their God,
they reputed every nation to have its own , and, looking
back to their most early progenitors, who had been the
glories of their times, and under whom had been laid all the
foundations of their public and private happiness, they
opined them, after they had left the earth, to have taken
their orbs, to govern and influence the things below, in some
element, star, or sphere above, from heaven. The Greeks
thus reputed AstraBa, after long labours on earth, to do
good to mortals, to have at last left the world, to give her
light from the constellation called Virgo P. And we find it
an ancient apophthegm of the Egyptians, that their most an-
cient kings, who had prosperously governed them, were di-
vine q ; accordingly they now canonized these, and endea-
voured to devote and consign themselves to their protection.

That mythology came in upon this alteration of their
theology, is obviously evident : for the mingling the history
of these men when mortals, with what came to be ascribed
to them when gods, would naturally occasion it. And of
this sort we generally find the mythoi told of them r . I will
go no further at this time into this topic, although I might
much enlarge upon it, by considering how mythology spread

Micah iv. 5. 2 Kings xviii. 33 iroi &a<n\fvovTai virb Qeov- rb yap apxov

35- ^ v fftdffrcf} Kttl Kparovv Of?6v tffnv. Plu-

P "ETTTO & fnrovpavl-r), ravrriv 5' Upa tarch. in Alexand. p. 680. F.

x^PW r The Egyptians having called their

evvuxi-n ert Qaiverai av- heroes by the names of their sidereal

i. Aratus Phoen. v. 134. and elementary deities, added to the

Thus^ the Egyptian heroes departed : history of the life and actions of such

ras Se tyvx^s \dp.ireiv &(TTpa. Vid. Plut. heroes a mythological account of

de Iside et Osirid. their philosophical opinions concern-

q Ae'7Tot 5e /rat Ta/^uwi/os ev Alyinrrif ing the gods whose names had also

rov <pi\o(r6<pov SiaKovffas a.iroQa<rQa.i /u<- been given to such heroes, &c. See

AKTTO rwv \fx6fvrwv, '6ri iravres avQpw- Connect, vol. ii. b. viii.

328

PREFACE.

from Egypt into Phrenicia; was indeed a little checked by
the inquiries of Sanchoniatho, but soon obtained again
to be grafted upon his philosophy 8 , infected even the Israel-
ites, when, in their defection from their worship of the true
God, they took up the tabernacle of Moloch^ and the star of the
god Remphan*; how it travelled into Greece, where new
fables were invented, and added to the more ancient ones ;
and these varied, in different ages", until they greV too
gross for philosophy to bear them, and occasioned! those who
speculated upon them to think many of them only tales of
poets, to please and take the minds of the vulgar, although
they saw in some a deeper and recondite meaning, which
they endeavoured to explore and interpret, as their traditions
furnished tenets for the solution of them. But having hinted
that, in fact, the writings of Egypt, in Moses's age, were

s "Ecas

vois vo~Tpov i)de\'rio~av avr^v [i. e. irp60e-
ffiv beforegoing] airoKptyai, Kal els rb
fj.v6u5es airoKarao-Trio-ai. Euseb. Prsep.
Evang. lib. i. c. 9.

* The Israelites' worship of the calf
at Horeb was in imitation of the Sacra
of the Egyptians; for the Egyptians
had consecrated animals to their si-
dereal and elementary divinities be-
fore the Israelites left them. See Con-
nect, vol. iii. b. xi. vol. ii. b. viii.
But St. Stephen, Acts vii. 43. does not
say that they worshipped Moloch and
Remphan in the wilderness ; but, after
the 40 years in the wilderness were
over, at the expiration of which they
came into Canaan, they were after
this given up to worship these gods,
who were hero gods of some of the
countries round about them.

u The U60os of Taautus, the blind
mechanical principle so called by the
Egyptian naturalists, became the "Epos
of the mythologists, not meaning by
that word, Cupid, the blind god of
love; for this god of love is not
named, or is, if mentioned, called
"Ipepos in Homer, never "Epos or'Epcas :
and Hesiod also names him "iMepos,
and describes him to belong to Venus,
and not to be "Epos. For of Venus or
Cytherea he says,
Tp S'*Epos oa/j-dprrjare Kai"lfj,epos eVirero

KO,\OS. Hesiod. Theog. v. 201.
Eros himself was not the blind and in-
constant boy unto whom later fables
ascribed a presidency over the

Res solliciti plena timoris amor
Ovid.

over the fickle passion which admits,
as Terence tells us, neque consilium ne-

Enodum, &c. but Eros was in the
ning from Chaos and Tellus, like
r in Sanchoniatho, and is de-
scribed,

"Epos, bs Kd\\t<TTos

0eoio-t,
A.vffifJL(\))s,
r' avOpcotrcav

Hesiod. Theog. v. 120.
Eros, in the natural system called
Tl6Qos, was the principle that brought
things into the harmony of order out
of chaos or confusion ; and the person
feigned by the fabulists to be this
deity, was some eminent personage,
who had excelled in ability to temper
and moderate the minds of men ; who
had governed himself, and greatly
taught others to have peace in them-
selves, and to live in peace and har-
mony with other persons. And that
love should follow after, wherever
such a person is acquainted with Ve-
nus, the goddess of all elegance and
beauty, is no unreasonable supposi-
tion : but whether this mythos was
more antique than Hesiod, I am un-
certain; I think we find nothing like
it in Homer: he supposes Venus to
be the goddess, who subjected unto
love both mortals and immortals ; and
"1/j.fpos, whom Hesiod makes a person,
is like <pi\6rir)s in Homer, not a proper
name, but generally, I think always,
a common noun. Horn. II. |. 197,
&c.

PREFACE. 329

only plain narrations, as they conceived things to have been
caused by operations of nature exerting themselves without
any intelligent being creating and directing them ; and
that Moses, contrary hereto, set forth as plainly that there
was a God, who created and governed all things ; that in
opposition hereto the heathen nations, not acknowledging
the one God, and yet brought to think that agencies
without intelligence could not be the powers that ruled the
world, set up gods many, and those such gods that fable
and mythology naturally arose from the institution of them,
and consequently had their rise not until Moses's system was
thus opposed, not until after his days; although I cannot
herein pretend to any certainty of demonstration, yet, I
think, I may venture to say, nothing so probable as what I
have offered can be collected from any remains of antiquity
to contradict it.

The objections I have replied to in the ensuing treatise are
taken chiefly from Dr. Eurnet, sometime Master of the Char-
ter-House. He appears to have given us the substance of
what can be offered against the literal interpretation : other
writers do but copy after him : Dr. Middleton, I think, im-
proves not any point he took from him. One indeed he
states in a manner something different from Dr. Burnet ; I
will here consider it as Dr. Middleton represents it.

Dr. Middleton suggests to us, that it is not possible for
any mortal " to give an historical narration, to describe the
" particular manner, order, and time, in which, or the ma-
" terials, out of which, this world and its principal inhabit-
" ant man were formed : that were any writer to pretend to
" it, we should apply to him what was said by God to Job,
" Where wast ihou when Ilaid the foundations of the earth?
" declare, if ihou hast understanding*. And we should think
" the same of him, which Job confesseth of himself, that
" he had uttered what he understood not ; things too wonderful
"for him, which he knew not? : we should conclude at once,
" that the whole, which the wisest of men could write upon
" the subject, must be the mere effect of fancy and imagi-
" nation." " From the nature of the story itself, we should
" readily conclude, that no writer whatsoever could be so
" sufficiently informed as to be able to give an historical
" narration of it, or could have authority enough to make
" it pass for such with any judicious reader z ." Dr. Middle-
ton introduces the suggestion, not pretending directly to say
that Moses could not possibly, supposing him an inspired

x Job xxxviii. 4. z See Middleton's Examinat. p. 128.

y Job xlii. 3. Burnet's Archseol. p. 284.

330

PREFACE.

writer, give an authentic account of the facts related by
him ; but desiring to have the reader weigh and consider
what he would reasonably think of such facts so related, if
the relator was believed not to have the warrant of a real
revelation from God of the matters declared by him 7 . What
argument can be drawn from what he thus offers seems to
me very obscure. The Apostle tells us, that through faith we
understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God*.
He herein evidently refers to the Mosaic history. That the
worlds were not eternal, but were made by the power of
God, may be demonstrated from the reason and nature of
things ; but that God spake the word, and they were made ;
commanded, and they were created*; that they were not made,
without the word spoken by him ; not made by the imme-
diate purpose of his will ; but that he said. Let them be, and
they were so c ; as also that things did not instantly, all at
once, take their being, as he might design them, but in six
days were in their several orders framed and fashioned, day
by day, such in every day as he was pleased to appoint, when
before there were none of them ; this we may have no reason
to believe A but upon the authority of Moses's history. And

r Let us take a review of the story,
as if it had been told us by Sancho-
niatho: Middleton's Examinat. p. 128.

a Heb. xi. 3.

b Psalm cxlviii. 5. See xxxiii. 6, 9.

c Gen. i. 3, 6, IT, 14, 20, 24, c.

d Nothing would give us so clear a
view of the Apostle's reasoning in the
nth chapter to the Hebrews, as the
carefully observing his distinction and
definition of the word faith. Faith, he
tells us, ver. i. is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
The word we translate substance is
vir6ffTcuris : how we came here to render
it substance, is not easy to say : as de-
rived from virb and 'lffri)/j.i, it may sig-
nify what the logicians define substance,
res subsistens et substans accidentibus ;
but/at^, an act of the mind, is no such
substance. There is a passage in the
New Testament, which may lead us to
render this place more pertinently.
St. Paul tells us, 2 Cor. ix. 4. of the
vTr6ffrao-isofhis boasting: here we render
the word the confidence. The apostle
assuredly believed his boasting not to
be groundless, and this assured belief he
called virSa-raa-is. In this we have a clear
meaning : faith is this assurance, an

undoubting persuasion of the things
hoped for. The

Apostle adds, that it is

the evidence, eteyxos, what argues to us
things not seen. We are apt to be very
indistinct in our notions of faith. In
common speech we often take faith
and knowledge the one for the other:
the believing a thing upon good testi-
mony, and the knowing it, are in a
general acceptation reputed one and
the same thing. But the Scriptures
shew us a real difference between
faith and knowledge : they are not the
same attainments ; for we are exhorted
to add the one to the other : Add, says
St. Peter, to your faith knowledge, 2 Pet.
i. 5. Faith is the believing things not
seen, not known to ourselves, but de-
clared to us, and believed upon testi-
mony that they are true. We are ca-
pable of information, without the testi-
mony of others, two ways ; by our
senses, and by our understandings :
things external strike our senses, and
we immediately know what impres-
sions we receive of them ; and we have
an ability of mind to see and compare
our thoughts of things, and to form a
judgment what to conclude of them.
In this sense divers things, which, li-
terally speaking, are invisible, may in
the language of St. Paul be said to be
clearly seen, being understood, Rom.i. 20.
We have a knowledge, an intuition of

PREFACE. 331

now shall we ask the question, What if we set aside all con-
sideration of the authority of Moses, and suppose what is
written by him as if written by Sanchoniatho, or any other
ancient sage who wrote uninspired what he apprehended to
be true, agreeably to his own sentiments of things ? I an-
swer : It will unquestionably follow, such sage not being in-
fallible, if there be many as possible ways, in which the
things related by him might have been done, besides the
particular one he has adopted, we may have no reason to
believe the particulars declared by him, exclusive of all
others. But I see no point hence gained towards infidelity ;
because the authority of the inspired writer not being de-
stroyed, but only, for argument's sake, put aside out of the
question, the foundation of God remaineth still sure / the au-
thority of the inspired writer, whenever we look back to it,
brings its force along with it, to assure us that what is de-
clared by such writer must be true, and ought to be be-
lieved by us. Our disputant therefore seems to me to be
contriving rather how to beguile us, than substantially to
confute us. To be desired, for arguments sake, to lay aside
the authority of sacred writ, to examine how far the truth
of what is declared, is such, that by reason alone, without
other authority, we may prove it, is a specious proposal : but
if, upon such examination, we find of the matter inquired
after, that, had it not been authentically related to have
been done in a particular manner, many other ways might
be conceived, in which it might as reasonably have been
effectuated, if we will not here reassume the authority of the
relation made to us, to give it its just weight to determine
our belief, we cannot be said to be reasoned out of our faith ;
for we inconsiderately give it up, without any reason for our
so doing.

For man to tell how human life began

Is hard ; for who himself beginning knew ?

Milton's Par ad. Lost, b. viii.

For man to pretend further to speak of his own actual know-
ledge of things done and past, before he had any being, is in
the nature of the thing impossible ; but for Adam, during

them in our mind, from our clear rea- would accurately distinguish between

sonings upon them, without informa- belief in the general, and that faith

tion of them from another : but faith which is our religious concern, in the

is not of this sort ; faith cometh by hear- one we believe things which are testi-

ing, Rom. x. 17. It is the belief of fied to be known by men to be true;

what we do not know of ourselves, in the other we believe things that are

but are assured is known by some well testified to have been declared

other, and declared to us : and if we from God.

332 PREFACE.

the space of a life of above 900 years 6 , to recollect all that he
had experienced, from the time that he had a knowledge of
his being ; to conceive him to have had revelations from
the voice of God, of all that God thought fit should be made
known unto men ; of his creation of the heavens and the
earth, and of all the host and creatures of them ; for Adam
frequently to inculcate to his children all he thus knew ;
for authentic narrations of these things to have come down
from before the flood to the posterities that were after-
wards f ; and to have been, when Moses wrote his history,
no such obsolete remains as we now may be apt to. think
them ; are things in themselves not at all improbable.

From Adam unto Abraham, considering the then duration
of men's lives, is, comparatively speaking, no greater length
for even tradition, than from our father's grandfather unto
usS. Abraham lived to A.M. 2i83 h , to see Jacob, the
father of Joseph, about 15 years old 1 . Jacob had from his
youth up been a diligent inquirer into, and observer of, the
hopes k and fear of his fathers 1 , and had himself many reve-
lations from God m . He came down unto Joseph, and
lived with him in Egypt seventeen years before he died",
and lived there full of the hope of the promises, and died in
the belief of them ; and left Joseph as fully embracing
them, and persuaded of them, and testifying them unto his
brethren when he also died P. Joseph lived to see his son
Ephraim's children of the third generation* 1 ; and Moses
was not lower than in the third generation from Levi r .
The father of Moses must have been well known personally
to Joseph. Put these things together, and we may reason-
ably admit all that had been believed from the beginning
in this family might have come down unto Moses so au-
thentically testified, that all that he wrote of, from the crea-
tion to his own times, might unquestionably be received by
his brethren and fathers as well warranted to be true. And
agreeably hereto we find, that, notwithstanding all the op-
positions he had from his Israelites, enow surely, during the
whole forty years he had the charge of them 5 , to make it

e Adam lived 930 years, Gen. v. 5. k Ibid. p. 384, &c.

f There might be among the faith- 1 Gen. xxxi. 53.
ful before the flood more express reve- m Ch. xxviii. xxxii. xxxv. &c.
lations than have come down to our n Ch. xlvii. 28.
times. Bishop of London's Dissert, ii. He prophesied of them to his sons

p. 237. See Jude, ver. 14. See Connect, very largely, Gen. xlviii. xlix. 29.
vol. i. b. i. P Gen. 1. 24.

S See hereafter, ch. viii. I Ver. 23.

h Connect, vol. ii. b. vi. p. 281. r I Chron. vi. i 3.

i Jacob was born A.M. 2168. vol. s See Connect, vol. iii. b. xii. p.

ii. b. viL p. 337. 242, &c.

PREFACE. 333

plain, that they were not a people disposed implicitly to be-
lieve him, but rather, wherever they could find the least
pretence for it, most zealously asserting a liberty to gainsay
and contradict him ; notwithstanding, in all he had related
to them from the creation to his becoming their leader, we
have not any one hint that they disbelieved it in any one
particular at all.

But, should I here rest this matter, and suppose Moses's
history of the creation and fall to have no greater authority
than what can be given it from its being reasonable to be-
lieve he might write it merely from the records of his
fathers, I should most egregiously trifle ; for, let but the
conduct of Moses, what he said, and what he wrote, and
what he did, be considerately examined, and it will appear
beyond a possibility of contradiction, that God himself was
in many things his infallible director* : and if God was his
director in other parts of his writings, what reason can we
have to think he was not so from the beginning? In the
history of the fall, Moses writes so emphatically, that one
person should be descended from the woman, to be the ca-
pital subduer of the great enemy of mankind 11 ; he limited
this person to be of the seed of Abraham x ; of Isaac y ; of the
tribe of Judah z ; that flesh and blood only could not have
assured him 1500 years beforehand that thus it should be a .
But the things he thus foretold were accomplished in a mi-
raculous manner, when the fulness of their time was come : the
prediction then, and the fulfilling it, bear an undeniable
testimony to each other. Nothing but the immediate power
of God could have brought to pass the things foretold, in the
manner in which they were accomplished, so that the par-
ticular accomplishment of them could be none other than the
work of God ; and as no one could foresee what God would
thus do, but the spirit of God*; so no man beforehand could
say of these things, that they should so be, unless it had
been revealed from God.

Contrary to what the Scriptures inform us, and which I
have had occasion to mention, that our Saviour was a de-
scendant from David, Dr. Middleton would seem to argue
that he was not really of the tribe of Judah ; but rather of
the tribe of Levi. I need not go through a long detail of
what he offers ; the whole of it may be comprised in a few
particulars, i. He observes that Joseph, the husband of

* See Connect, vol. Hi. b. xii. p. y Gen. xxi. 12.

231 256. z Ch. xlix. 10.

See hereafter, ch. xi. a Matth. xvi. 17.

x Ibid. See Gen. xxii. 18. b i Cor. ii. n.

334 PREFACE.

Mary the mother of Jesus, was only the reputed father of
our Saviour ; he says our Saviour had really no share or par-
ticipation of his blood c . And yet, 2. that the Evangelists,
whenever they deduce his pedigree, shew him to have been
the son of David, by a line up from Joseph only (1 . 3. That
they never say that Mary the mother of Jesus, through
whom alone his real genealogy could come from David, was
descended of David e . 4. That their silence herein seems to
make it probable that Mary was not of such descent.
5. That Mary is observed to be the cousin of Elisabeth*, and
that Elisabeth being of the daughters of Aaron s, Mary her
cousin was most probably of the same tribe, namely, of the
tribe of Levi, and not of the tribe of Judah h . The answer
to this is, i. The Evangelists are particularly careful to ob-
serve, that Jesus was not descended from Joseph his reputed
father 1 . 2. Their deducing Joseph's pedigree from David
was purely to remove the prejudices of the Jews. The
Jews at first would look no further than to consider Jesus as
the carpenter's son k , and were scandalized at the meanness
of his birth 1 ; thought him a fellow of so low an extraction,
that there was no saying whence he was m . Contrary to
these their prevailing sentiments, the Evangelists, at the
same time not concealing or disguising the truth, that Jesus
really was of God n , that Joseph was only his supposed fa-
ther ; nevertheless took care to shew, that had his genealogy
been, as they imagined, to be reckoned by or through Jo-
seph, even thus also he would have been the son of David :
and this either of the two ways in which the Jews counted
their pedigrees : in one they reckoned the son to belong to
the parent who begat him ; in the other, where a man died
without issue , and his brother or next of kin married the
widow, and raised up seed to the deceased, the seed raised
up was counted not to the real father who begat him, but
to the deceased who died without issue p . And this is al-
lowed to have occasioned the difference between St. Mat-
thew's and St. Luke's genealogies^: both which considered
were evidence to the Jews, that, although they were obsti-
nate and would reckon our Saviour's descent through Jo-
seph, yet even here, count which way they would, the ge-

c Remarks on the Variations in the i Matth. i. 18 25. Lukei. 35. iii.23.

Evangelists, p. 29. k Matth. xiii. 55.

d Ibid. l Ibid.

e Ibid. p. 30. m John ix. 29.

f Luke i. 36. n Vide quse sup.

g Ver. 5. o Deut. xxv. 5.

h It needs not be remarked, that P Ver. 6.

David was of the tribe of Judah. q Matth. i. Luke iii.

PREFACE. 335

nealogy would come up to David. But, 3. why was not
the descent of Mary, of whom alone our Saviour's genea-
logy could truly come from David, as expressly said to be
from that patriarch, as Joseph's ? I answer, it was. St. Luke
tells us, in recording the angel's salutation of Mary, that the
son to be born of her should have the throne of his father
David ; so that he recognizes David to be the progenitor of
Jesus : he immediately after allows that this child was to be
born of Mary, without her knowing man r . If he had not be-
fore hinted of the child thus to be born, that by his mother he
was a descendant of David, his narration would evidently be a
contradiction to itself: but this the Evangelist had sufficiently
guarded against in plainly telling us, before he begins the salu-
tation, that the angel Gabriel was sent to a virgin of the house
of David 8 . The words, espoused to a man, whose name was
Joseph, inserted between virgin and of the house of David*,
may be a parenthesis, indicating that of the house of David
should not be attributed to Joseph : for, as I have observed,
the sense and argument of the whole context must lead us
to think otherwise; as indeed does also the manner of the
expression : for as the genealogies of the Jews were deduced
in the male line, it is most reasonable to think, that if the
Evangelist had here intended what he said to be understood
of Joseph, his expression would have been, as he elsewhere
says of him, of the house and lineage of David u ; but women,
though not said to be of the lineage, being with propriety
recorded to be of the house of their fathers*, the expression
concurs with the reason of the narration, that the Evangelist
herein spake of Mary only. But, 4. why was not this
point more frequently, more clearly, more largely insisted
upon ? I answer ; Because it was a point doubted by none,
but allowed by all : it was, St. Paul tells us, Trpobr]\ov, mani-
fest, without controversy, that our Lord sprang of the tribe of
Judah?. How sprang of that tribe 2 by his father Joseph ?
This the Apostles denied : it must then be thus undisputed,
by the descent of Mary only. For, 5. as to what is said
of Elisabeth being cousin to Mary, and therefore, Elisabeth
being of the tribe of Levi z , that Mary also was of that
tribe ; this way of arguing, for any one of letters to make
use of it is a most indefensible trifling. It can have weight

r Luke 1.32, 35.

s Ver. 27. u Luke ii. 4.

t The words of the text are, irpbs x Psalm xlv. 10. Gen. xxiv. 40. etin

Trdpdfvov, fj.f/j.vr)(rTv/jLfi''r)i' avdpl $ ovo^a. al. loc.

'loxrVf), e otttov AajSfS. An obstinate Y Heb. vii. 14.

critic may fight this battle, but I z Luke i. 5.
apprehend 4 ofKov Aaj8l5 to belong to

336 PREFACE.

only with a mere English reader, who possibly may be de-
ceived by the common acceptation of our English word
cousin. The word used by the Evangelist is avyytvris*' :
St. Paul uses the same, where he tells us of his great heavi-
ness and continual sorrow of heart for his brethren, his kinsmen
according to the flesh, his crvyytv&v Kara adpK.a b . Who they
were that stood in this relation to him he informs us very
clearly: they were not those of the tribe of Benjamin, his
own tribe, only c ; but they were all the Israelites' 1 , all
to whom pertained the adoption, the glory, and the covenants,
and the giving of the law; the promises, unto which all their
twelve tribes hoped to come e : so that it is most evident that
the relation specified between Mary and Elisabeth, in the
word cousin, or crwyyevrjs, did not at all mean that they were
both of the same tribe, but that they were children of the
same people; both of them Israelites of one and the same
stock, namely, of the stock of Abraham*. The reader cannot
but see, that in this argument Dr. Middleton descended
below every notion we can have of a man of learning, to
invent an expedient to puzzle (to such readers as might not
be able to consider the texts cited by him, in their original
language) the most clear and allowed truths concerning our
Saviour, of which he could not but know no real argument
could be formed to contradict them : and this he came
down to (what induced him I will not take upon me to de-
termine) at a season of life, when he stood upon the very
threshold of immortality.

The principles, which I have made the foundation of the
following treatise, are, that human reason was not originally
a sufficient guide for man, without some express revelation
from God; and that positive precepts given by God, how-
ever we may be apt to conclude of them, from their not ap-
pearing intrinsecally of real moment to the rectitude of our
lives, are not therefore unreasonable and vain. The professed
opposers of revelation must be herein unanimously against
me : and some valuable writers, not apprehending a neces-
sity, though allowing the expediency of a revelation, do not
entirely think with me in these particulars. The reader will
find their way of reasoning considered in the following
pages g. All I would here offer is, that if authority was of
moment, I might cite even Dr. Middleton for me in these
points. It is obvious to observe, that he knew there might

a Luke i. 36. 'EAt(Ta/8er f) ffvyyev-^s d Ch. ix. 4.
trov. e Acts xxvi. 7.

b Rom. ix. 3. f Ch. xiii. 26.

c Ch. xi. i. S See chap. v.

PREFACE. 337

be found "the testimony of all ages, the experience of all
tf the great reasoners of the heathen world, that reason,
" human reason alone, had not light enough to guide man-
" kind in a course of virtue and morality :" that there was
" such an universal conviction and experience," he says,
" of the insufficiency of reason, as seemed to be the voice of
" nature disclaiming it, as a guide, in the case of religion h ."
In like manner, treating of positive precepts, he deduces an
argument from what may be observed of God's works ;
that " the wise of all ages have from the excellency of God's
" works collected the excellency of his nature : yet in those
tf works all still agree that there are some particulars, not
" only whose nature, but whose use or reason of existence
tf cannot be discovered by the most curious searchers into
" nature ; nay, some things, which, considered separately, ap-
" pear even noxious to the rest ; all which, though not un-
" derstood, are yet reasonably presumed to be good and per-
" feet in their several kinds, and subservient to the general
" beauty and excellency of the whole system 1 ." He proceeds :
" It is full as unreasonable to charge all positive precepts
" supposed to come from God, whose use and relation to
44 morality we cannot comprehend, to fraud and imposture ;
" as in the visible works of God to impute every thing we
" do not understand, or even every thing that seems hurtful,
" to the contrivance of some malicious power opposite to
" the divine nature." " As, on the one hand, we do not ex-
" elude from the catalogue of God's works all those parti-
" culars, in which we cannot trace the marks of divine
" wisdom ; so, on the other, we cannot exclude irom the
" body of his Jaws those few injunctions which seem not to
" have impressed on them the legible characters of mo-
" ralityV

In examining the text of Moses, I have proposed to the
learned reader's disquisition, whether, in the J9th and 2oth
verses of the second chapter of Genesis, two words, nepesh
chajah, have not been, by the mistake of transcribers, re-
moved in the text from one line into another. The mistake
is so easy to be made, and the true and clear meaning of the
place is rendered so indisputable by allowing such a trans-
position, that I apprehend what I have suggested may per-
haps carry its own vindication. If I had the opportunity,
which a learned author is making a very commendable use

h Letter to Dr. Waterland, edit. 8. Id. p. 61.

p. 49, 50. k Id. p. 62.

338 PREFACE.

of m , to search such manuscript copies as we have of the
Hebrew Bible, I should very carefully have examined, whe-
ther any can be found which may justify my supposition.
There are other texts I could name, which I would make
a like inquiry into. I will mention two : one is the latter
part of the 24th verse of the 4gth chapter of Genesis. The
inquiry should be, whether the words now printed

are not in any manuscript wrote, p,N Hjn DttD.

: the supposed difference is in one letter only ; whe-
ther the first letter in the first word be a mem or a beth; a
difference so small, that a reader not very attentive may not
see it i the least dash of a pen added or omitted (the letters
are so similar) may make it the one or the other. The other
text is Psalm cv. 28. He sent darkness, and made it dark. In
our Bibles the translation of the latter part of the verse is,
and they rebelled not against his word. The old version still
used in our Common Prayer is, and they were not obedient
unto his word. The two versions evidently contradict each
other: the original words are printed *n!1 W2 NTH n . It
would, I think, be of no moment to consider how the trans-
lators came thus to differ ; the reader may see it by con-
sulting the critics : I do not find any good way proposed
for the bringing them to an agreement. Both the versions
cannot be true ; and it is therefore possible that neither
may. I would hereupon inquire, whether what we make two
words *HO NT 5 , and read loa maru, were not originally wrote
in one word TlftNT 1 , to be read lecemoru, the literal translation
of the verse to be thus ; He sent darkness, and made it dark,
and by his speaking his word. In this correction we do not
alter a letter : we only suppose what are now read in two
words to be really but one, and we vowel the words to
sound their syllables but very little differently in the one
case or the other P. But the fact alluded to being, that God
said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that
there may be darkness over the land of Egypt. And Moses
stretched forth his hand toward heaven, and there was a thick
darkness in all the land of Egypfa ; and the intention of the
Psalmist being to ascribe these miracles most expressly to
the word of God ; he spake, says he, and there came divers

m See Kennicott's State of the o Vide Poli Synops. in loc.
printed Hebrew Text of the Old Testa- P -no N 1 ?. We read 11 DN 1 ?. We

ment. must punctuate the words instead of

n The word is printed in the text -n^ M b rcb^h
V13T; but the marginal reference tells q jjxod. x. 21 22.
us it should be I'm.

PREFACE. 339

sorts of flies, and lice in all their coasts r : again, he spake, and
the locusts came, &c; both the manner of the Psalmist, and
the clear meaning of the place, seem to lead us to the reading
I am inquiring for.

I am sensible some very pious English readers may hastily
conceive offence at every liberty of this sort : they will be
ready to ask, May not a pretender to learning, at this rate,
make what he will of our Bible ? I answer, not at all ; and
may give a very plain sight, as it were, of the whole of this
matter. Suppose our English tongue had been originally
written, like the Hebrew, without inserting the vowels,
which give us the sound of the syllables : let us consider the
following paragraph ; He that taketh heed to the commandment
offereth a peace-offering*. It may be seen, that if these words
were to be written without vowels, the words peace-offering
might be thus characterized, p c f frng: suppose, through
some early mistake of transcribing, all printed copies had
both divided erroneously these letters into words, and had
not put the proper vowels under their respective letters ;
suppose the letters -^-^ which make one word, had the
vowels, being ie e, put under them as I have marked them ;
ie to be read between p and e, and e after c, a letter final ;
so as to read this word piece: suppose the first /was taken to
be a word by itself, and o put under it to read it of; suppose

"*" were voweled as I have underlined them ; i to be
sounded after r, e to be the final letter, the word to be thus
read fringe ; would any one rest satisfied to read the sentence,
He that taketh heed to the commandment offereth a piece of
fringe. And should any one shew that of is with the fol-
lowing letters but one word, and that the letters might be
so voweled as to read pc f fr ng, a peace offering, would
not the clear sense of the place vindicate this to be the true
reading, and evince that the other, of what date soever, and
how much soever followed, must be an error ? and would
any reasonable man be ready to think of him, that should
offer so expressive an emendation, that it might be dan-
gerous lest he should make the English tongue speak what-
ever he had a mind to, and not its certain and true mean-
ing! I do not intend to insinuate that the case I have put
exactly resembles either of our translations of the Psalmist
above cited. It certainly does not, neither of our transla-
tions being in themselves absurd : and the Hebrew tongue
is not so various in its number of words so far similar, as
that instances can occur in it, such as may be in our English

r Psalm cv. 31, 34. s Ecclus. xxxv. i.

VOL. II. Z

340 PREFACE.

if so written. But, although in the Hebrew the vowels put
under the words in points may be necessary to pronun-
ciation, to teach or remind us to give the word such sylla-
bles, and each syllable such sound, as the points put under
them direct ; yet, as such points were not originally in the
sacred pages*, so neither are they necessary to any one who
tolerably knows the language, to ascertain to him the true
meaning of a text ; for if a word happens to be wrong
punctuated, it may mislead him ; and if it be not punctuated
at all, the letters of the word, and the context, will better
direct him to see the true meaning of the text, without any
false bias to divert him from it.

The talking of various readings, transpositions of words,
additions in some copies of the Scriptures, omissions in
others, are indeed matters so managed by the artful, who
desire to perplex and deceive, as to raise terrible appearances
or apprehensions in the minds of the well-meaning, but
unwary and unlearned ; and I know of no writer that has
endeavoured this point more unfairly than the late lord
Bolingbroke : he roundly tells us, " that the Scriptures are
w come down to us broken and confused, full of additions,
" interpolations, and transpositions, made we neither know
" when nor by whom; and such, in short, as never appeared
u on the face of any other book, on whose authority men
" have agreed to rely u /' In another place he says, the Scrip-
tures are " extracts of histories, not histories ; extracts of
" genealogies, not genealogies 31 :" and, in a third place, that
" it would not be hard to shew, upon great inducements of
" probability, that the law and the history were far from
" being blended together as they now stand in the Penta-
" teuch, even from the time of Moses down to that of
" Esdrasy." It would not be decent in me to say how pal-
pably untrue all these assertions are ; the two last of them I
some time ago considered very largely, and I hope with the
utmost freedom and impartiality 2 : and that the sacred
books are far from having had a worse preservation than
other ancient writings, has been unanswerably shewed by a
more able hand, as far as concerns the New Testament 3 ;
and should Mr. Kennicott proceed as he has began, and
collate the manuscript and printed copies of the Old Testa-

t See what the very learned dean y Id. pag. TOO.

Prideaux has wrote at large upon this z Preface to Connect, vol. iii. p. 16,

subject, Connect, part i. b. v. &c.

u Of the Study of History, Letter Phileleuth. Lipsiens. p. i. p. 92

iii. p. 95, 96. 114-

x Id. p. 102.

PREFACE,

ment, we should see the event come out in the one case, as
it is known to have done in the other. Dr. Bentley would
have told lord Bolingbroke, upon what he says of additions,
omissions, interpolations, variations, &c. in the Scriptures,
" that it filled him with disdain to see such common stuff
" brought in with an air of importance." All his lordship
offers has been before offered by even the lowest creatures of
the unbelieving tribe ; even the assertion his lordship seems
to plume upon, that " the Scriptures would have been pre-
" served entirely in their genuine purity, had they been en-
" tirely dictated by the Holy Ghost b :" and they have been
answered over and over c .

These are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before
there reigned any king over the children of Israel^. It is com-
monly observed of this paragraph, that it could not be
written until after there had been a king in Israel; until
after the times of Saul, and consequently that it was not
written by Moses. Suppose now that we can in no wise find
out by whom it was written; admit that some private
owner of a manuscript Pentateuch wrote it in the margin
of his manuscript as a remark of his own, that a copier of
such manuscript carelessly wrote it into the text of his
transcript ; is there any thing material in this interpolation ?
Must not the learned see the Scripture to be perfect without
it, and can the unlearned see any detriment in having the
observation ? Of this sort are the interpolations so formidably
talked of; they are very few in number, though said at
random to be so many : and whatever apprehensions may be
raised in the minds of the unlearned about them, nothing is
more easy to be shewn, than that no point of our religion is
materially affected by them at all.

But there are omissions in some texts of Scripture. They
who say this should produce their instances, deal openly and
fairly with the world ; let us see of what nature their ob
jection is, that we may not be amused and alarmed where
there is no reason. I will therefore give an instance or two,
that even the unlearned reader may judge of this particular.
In the 1 2th chapter of Exodus, ver. 40. we read, Now the so-
journing of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, (I should
rather translate the Hebrew words, which they sojourned in
the land of Egypt,) was four hundred and thirty years. It is
plain that the Israelites were not 430 years in Egypt, for

Lard Bolingbroke's Letter iii. p. 95. c See PhiL Lipsieiu d Gen. xxxvi. 31,

PREFACE.

they came into Egypt A. M. 2298 e , and their exit was
A. M. 2513?; so that their sojourning in Egypt was but
215 years. But the Septuagint give us this text as follows ;
Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, which they so-
journed in the land of Egypt , and in the land of Canaan, was
four hundred and thirty years%: the words here added are.
and in the land of Canaan. Now Abraham came into Ca-
naan to sojourn there A. M. 2083 h ; count hence to the
exit, and we find it exactly 430 years. What difficulty now
can we have, even supposing that no Hebrew manuscript
now extant has the words we render, and in the land of
Egypt 1 ; will any reasonable inquirer not think that these
words were in the text which the Septuagint translated
from, and that they really belong to the Hebrew text,
though the manuscript copies we have may by some care-
lessness of copiers have omitted them? The observation of
our learned critic is a very just one : " If emendations are
" true, they must have been once in some manuscripts, at
" least in the author's original. But it will not follow that,
" because no manuscript now exhibits them, none more an-
cient ever didV

No one can doubt but that Moses, in the 33d chapter of
Deuteronomy, blessed the twelve tribes, every tribe parti-
cularly according to his blessing ; and yet we are said to
have no one copy of the original text, no one version in the
general, which mentions the tribe of Simeon at all, the
Alexandrian manuscript of the Septuagint only inserting
the name Simeon in the 6th verse, writes that verse in that
one word differently from all other copies 1 . Here then is an
omission that can be supplied from no Hebrew manuscript;
will it follow here is no omission ? No version that we now
have amends this omission, except one copy of one transla-
tion: will it follow that originally all versions had not the
name of Simeon ? Is it not apparently more reasonable to
conclude the Alexandrian manuscript was transcribed from

e See Connect, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 383. land of Egypt.

f Ibid, book ix. p. 554. k Philel. Lips. p. 106.

S 'H 8e KaTo'iKtiffis rcav vtuv 'l<rpa))X, 1 The Hebrew text is,

V KarcfK-rjaav ev yrj AlyvTrrca KOI i/ 777 1DDQ VPQ TVl no* btfl pltfl TV

Xavaav, err) Tpiait6(ria rpidKovra. Vers. The common Septuagint Version is

Septuagint. Z-i^rca 'Pov^v /ecu ^ airoBaverca Kctl ecrra>

h Connect, vol. i. b. v. p. 275. iro\vs eV apiQ^. The Alexandrian

i I ought not to omit, that in the Sa- Manuscript is, Zifro> 'Pov/Sriv /ecu fj^

maritan Pentateuch the Hebrew words airoOaveTO). Kal 'Zvn.f&v earca iro\vs ev
are found, which we render, attd in the

PREFACE. 343

some copy of some more ancient manuscript that had the
word Simeon, that the original manuscript of the Septua-
gint translated from an Hebrew copy, that had it likewise ;
and that the word Simeon was originally in the Hebrew
text, however, through some carelessness of transcribers, it
came to be dropped, and to occasion great numbers of copies
and versions to be without it. There is room in all cases of
this nature for a reasonable consideration of inquiry : and I
dare venture to affirm, that there is no Scripture difficulty
of which a serious inquirer, able to make a proper search
for it, may not find a proper solution. As for those who
have not literature for the examination, if they read the
Scriptures with a careful design to be made wise by them
unto salvation, they will soon know enough not to be led
away blindly by those who perhaps know little more than
what may enable them to impose upon and deceive others
in points, of which, whether they can say correctly what
is the right or the wrong, may not be materially of moment
to them.

The learned have raised a great dust about a text in
St. John's first Epistle, whether, in chap. v. verses 7 and 8,
For there are three that bear record [in heaven, the Father,
the Word, and the Holy Ghost : and these three are one. And
there are three that bear witness in earth,] the Spirit, and the
water, and the blood ; and these three agree in one : whe-
ther the words which I have written in a different character
are in some manuscripts ; and in what particular copies they
are not. The reader may see the whole of what can be
offered upon this point in Dr. Mills m , and will probably not
think there is any thing in the whole that will greatly
affect him, when he considers, that what is here said of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, that they are one, is a
doctrine to be deduced from other texts of Scripture : and,
if I may be permitted, I would inquire, whether it may not
perhaps be shewn to be not a jot or tittle more than what
even Moses had declared 1500 years before the writing any
books of the New Testament were at all thought of.

The 39th verse of the 32d chapter of Deuteronomy has in
our English version of it these words ; / even I am he, and
there is no God with me. I would hereupon observe, i . That
the Hebrew text is, Ani Ani Hua, ve ein Elohim nimmadi".
2. There is no word in the text answering to the English
word even, nor is there any verb expressed in the text, no

m Vide Millii Testam. Nov. ad fin. n The Hebrew words are,
Epist. primee sancti Johannis. ,'iay CPn'jN J't-n Nin ^N ':N

344

PREFACE.

word for am, nor for is. 3. That Ani Ani is not the usual
way of expressing / even I in Hebrew : it should rather have
been Ani hinneni, if / even /had been intended. I even I
do bring a flood, is not Ani Ani, but Ani hinneni : for these
reasons, ought we not to translate the words of Moses li-
terally, Ani Ani Hna ve ein Elohim nimmadiv ; I, /, He, but
not gods with me? The verb substantive here understood
speaks itself to be, There are : I and I and He, are three per-
sonal pronouns : and the whole sentence is verbally ren-
dered, There are I, and I, and He<\, but not gods with me.
It was a doctrine before taught by Moses, that there were
more persons than one called Jehovah, God whom no man hath
seen at any time, nor can see ; and the Lord, who had appeared
unto Abraham*. And yet he strictly charges Israel to hear,
i. e. to observe it to be their faith, that Jehovah their Elohim
was one Jehovah*. May we not suppose him in the text
before us declaring, in the terms of the same faith, that the
three persons he here speaks of were not Elohim, gods in the
plural number 1 ; for, to use the words of Scripture, they
were one Jehovah ? And now,

If what I have thus offered may be admitted, it must
surely be a vain labour for any to endeavour to strike the
words they are desirous to contest out of the New Testa-
ment, unless they could really put the doctrine intended in
them out of the Old. But such is the harmony of Scripture,
that nothing in it is really iSia? e7riAwea>s u , of a private inter-
pretation, so peculiarly differing from all other Scriptures, as
not to have such a coincidence with them as may warrant
it to be true : rather oftentimes what the prophets of a later
age have said, when considered, opens itself to have such a
foundation in what had been said before, though it be evi-
dent that the speakers had no intention of speaking the one

See Gen. vi. 17.
do bring a flood is,

Behold I even I

And it is by some thought that '23H
here should be wrote nan. without the
suffix pronoun, as in Exodus xxxi. 6.

p no n*nb |'NI ton >:N ':.

mecum Dii at non ille ego ego.
A like expression, I think, is found in
Isaiah xliii. 25.

yyB nnn *on >a:m *3:
and in a like signification. It was
God, who is anochi, anochi, hua ; or
ani, ani, hua, that blotted out the
transgressions of his people.

Q The comma in English supplies
the copulative, which cannot but be
understood in the Hebrew, though
not inserted.

r See Connect, vol. ii. book ix. p.
528, &c.

s See Deut. vi. 4. Connect, ibid.
The Hebrew words in Deut. vi. 4. are,
*jn mrr irn^N mrr.

t The word QTibN is often used
as a noun plural in Scripture; see
D'rON ID^n 2 Sam. vii. 22. See
Deut. vi. 13, &c.

2 Pet. i. 20.

PREFACE. 345

from the other, that herein appears some signature of what
is said, that it is of God x .

There remain to be considered some other variations of
copies of the sacred books from one another. The books of
the New Testament have, it seems, been collated with so scru-
pulous an exactness, that we have it marked as a various
reading, if there is in different copies, or versions from
copies, or in citations of texts by subsequent writers for
near 500 years, the least difference of writing the smallest
particle or article of speech ; or if the order and collocation
of words minutely differs, though the meaning is exactly
and most clearly the same : and with all this indefatigable
preciseness, the variations in the New Testament only are
said to be 30000?. But let us consider : Can we think of any
book, that if it had been published so many years, and there
were so many different copies of it, translations into different
tongues, citations made from it in divers languages, and all
these were to be ransacked, and it were remarked as a dif-
ferent reading wherever the word and was wrote in three
letters, or in the character &, this was wrote J, that* y9 there-
fore r y f 0re , &c. with many other such minutenesses 2 ; abun-
dance of variations beyond number might not be amassed in
this manner \ Our learned critic assures us, upon his own
knowledge, that there is hardly a classic author, which, thus
examined, would not afford more various readings than the
Scriptures a . I may perhaps be allowed to say very securely,
that of the 30000 variations in the New Testament, not
near one in a thousand are in themselves worthy to be in the
least regarded; though the learned and laborious do well
to collect them, that those who know how to use them may
have full materials to shew, that all the fancies and sur-
mises, of which the imaginations of the opposers of religion
are ever pregnant, are rash, groundless, frivolous, and vain.
And as to the few that are of any moment in either the Old
Testament or the New, as far as my little inquiry has been
able to carry me, I never could see one, of which such an
account may not be given, as will shew that it neither de-'
prives me of the instruction of any page of the sacred writ-
ings, nor extinguishes any article of the faith, nor alters or
makes void any one duty of our religion : and may safely
affirm to those who of themselves may not find out these
particulars, or, if pointed to them, are not able readily to

x 2 Pet. i. 20. in the old black letter, wherein are

y See Phileleuth Lips. numbers of abbreviations different

z We might gather many of this from any now in use.
kind of variations from books printed a Phil. Lips. p. 96, 97.

346 PREFACE.

judge of them ; that, although I would not prevent any
from endeavouring to add knowledge to their faith, in what-
ever points they are able ; being fully satisfied that no
freedom of inquiry, justly conducted, can be of disservice to
the truth, provided we do not give ourselves up to be carried
to and fro with every wind of what seems new to us, beyond
what we understand : I say, even the lowest of our people,
who can only read, mark, learn, and digest our Scriptures as
our received English version offers them to us, to gather from
them that doctrine, reproof , correction, and instruction in
righteousness, which they plainly afford us, will find that they
can want nothing more to make them wise unto salvation. And
consequently how obvious to them will be the answer, long
ago returned to such a surmise as is offered by lord Boling-
broke ! That if the Scriptures were entirely the word of
God, all of them absolutely given by inspiration, they would
have been as absolutely preserved from all variations of
copies, and mistakes of transcribers. The answer is,

What a scheme would these men make ! What worthy
rules would they prescribe to providence ! That in millions
of copies, transcribed in so many ages and nations, all the
scribes or notaries, many of whom perhaps made it their
trade and livelihood to transcribe, should, whenever they
wrote out Scripture, be infallible and impeccable ; that their
pens should spontaneously write true, or be supernaturally
guided, though the scribes were nodding and dreaming.
And to what purpose should we require this miracle? to
keep clear and indubious the articles of our faith, or the
necessary rules for our moral lives ? No : in all these we are
safe, notwithstanding any imperfections of copies ; but
merely to silence every doubt and whim, which no man
truly religious, drawn by the cords of a man, by rational, in-
genuous, and moral motives, will have ; but may be cap-
tiously taken up by the impiety and folly of such as will
be pleased with any thing that but seems to be an objection
against the Scriptures b . Upon the whole,

Variations of Evangelists in their accounts of the same
facts, the conduct of this or that particular Apostle, as
also the differences of copies of the Scriptures, are topics
that designing men, with very little examination and know-
ledge of what they confidently affirm, are extremely apt to
take up ; one saying just what another had said before him,
only perhaps with a little more freedom and false assurance,
not considering how fully all they say, or can say upon

b See Phil. Lips. p. 112, 113.

PREFACE.

347

these topics, has been answered over and over. To writers
thus determined, of saying the same things there is no end:
all we can do is to remind the candid and sincere, that the
points so industriously propagated have been fully, freely,
and impartially considered by the ablest writers not only of
that profession, which it is become a fashion with some
most unmercifully to speak against, but by gentlemen also
of inquiry and impartiality ; of abilities and characters,
which no approbation of mine can add to : and that, as well
from what they have particularly written , as from what
others have more in the general considered upon these sub-
jects, it may be sufficiently known by even the plainest
reader, that the providence of God has permitted the Scrip-
tures to have the lot of all other writings that have passed
through the hands of men ; and has suffered even the writers
of these books sometimes so to differ, both in conduct and in
matters related by them, as to give an evidence that there
has been no confederacy of men to make the Scriptures
what they are. But there is in the sacred pages, in the
New Testament, a morality so perfect, that it cannot be
conceived, humanly speaking, that the first preachers of the
Gospel, men of such low parts and education as they were,
could in all points, without any one error d , have thus taught
the way of God in perfect truth; there is a forgiveness of
sin, exactly what is necessary for man e , and yet determi-

c No reader, that would judge of
these subjects, should omit to consider
and examine carefully Mr. West's
Observations on the Resurrection of
Christ: and another treatise, entitled,
Observations on the Conversion and
Apostleship of St. Paul.

d It would have weight with any
serious examiner to consider, that al-
though the wise heathens endeavoured
by the light of reason to trace out the
lines of moral duty, and many excel-
lent rules were given by many of
them, and perhaps a careful collector
might form a good system from them
all; yet, as they were but men, so
every one of them had their mistakes.
But herein there is a difference : there
are no defects, no one error in the
morality of the Gospel : the first pub-
Ushers of it were mean, illiterate, un-
learned men, and yet they gave us
moral precepts " all pure, all un-
" mixed ; no conceits or false rules ;
" nothing tending to the by-ends of
" any man, or any party; no tang of

' fancy or superstition ; no footsteps
" of pride or vanity ; no touch of
' ostentation and ambition; but all
' sincere : nothing too much, nothing
* wanting ; but the whole is so per-
' feet and complete, tends so abso-
' lutely to the good of mankind, that
' all would be happy even in this
' world, if all would sincerely endea-
1 vour to practise it : and, if we could
' come up to the full practice of it, we
' should be so whole as to need no
' physician to attain the bliss and
( glory of the world to come."

e The Scriptures conclude every
man to be under sin, Gal. iii. 22. af-
firming, that there is no man that sinneth
not, i Kings viii. 46. And not only
the Scriptures testify that we every one
know this of ourselves, that, if we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us, i John i. 8.
but the very heathens allow it : Q ris-
que innocentem se dicit, respiciens testem
non coriscientiam, says Seneca, de Ira,
lib. i. The question then will occur,

348

PREFACE.

nately indulging no one human corruption whatsoever f ;
there is an atonement for sin, such as no invention of man
would have proposed s, but yet so foretold and prefigured

How can man be justified with God?
Job xxv. 4. A forgiveness of sin must
be necessary for any flesh to be saved,
f The point I would here offer to
the reader's consideration is, Whether,
if the pardon of sin offered in the Gos-
pel had been the contrivance of men,
it would not, like what human con-
trivance is for inventing, have offered
indulgences for particular failings;
and whether therefore, on the con-
trary, considered truly as it is, a doc-
trine that favours no one foible of hu-
man nature, admits no thought of our
continuing in any one sin, that grace
may abound, Rom. vi. i. as there can
be no deceit where there is no error
proposed to us, a pardon of sin thus
circumstanced, strictly commanding
an impartial endeavour to perfect every
thing that is right, though it gives us
hopes, having sincerely endeavoured
this, not to be called to an account,
which the spirits of even just men can-
not be equal to ; whether, 1 say, such a
pardon of sin dees not approve itself
to be not only grace, but truth ? John
i. 17.

e The sentiments which the inqui-
sitive heathens had upon this subject
were as follow : they agreed phil >-
sophy to be useful to correct what
might be wrong in us : Est profecto
animi disciplina philosnphia, Cic. Tusc.
Disput. lib. iii. c. 3. They did not see
how they could purge or cleanse the
conscience of sins that had been com-
mitted. All the known rites of ablu-
tion they knew to be unphilosophical :
Animi labes nee diuturnitate evanescere
nee amnibus ullis elui potest. Cic. de
Leg. lib. ii. c. 10. They did not
think repentance could make them
whole : Quem pcenitet peccasse pcne est
innocens, is, I think, said by the same
writer; he does not wholly acquit
upon repentance. They had notions
that there might be purgations of sin
in another world. Thus Virgil tells us
of souls departed,

exercentur pcenis, veterumque ma-

lorum
Supplicia ej-pendunt : aitce pandun-

tur inanes
Suspenses ad rentes: a His sub gnrgitc

vnsto

Infectum eluitur see/us, aut exuritur
iifni:

Qmsqiie suns pa tirnur manes -

^Eneid. vi.

The construction in the last verse is,
T think, clear and easy; though both
our commentators and dictionaries
seem to make it difficult. Manes sig-
nifies our spirits departed out of this
life. Tt is the accusative case, signi-
fying the part of us affected : like
doleo caput, I have pain in my head; pa-
timur manes is, we suffer in our souls
departed. But others philosophized,
that, when this life was over, they
who had lived well should go into
some star, such as they had made
themselves meet to live in : Qui bene et
honeste curriculum vivendi a natura da-
tum confecerit, ad illud astrum,cui aptus
fuerit revertetur. Cic. lib, de Universo.
Which state was not opined to be ab-
solutely final ; for that spirits in a fu-
ture life might have a progress to per-
fection, and go from higher state to
higher, until they arrived at their su-
preme good. Vide Platon. in Phaedon.
in lib. de Legib. &c. And some al-
lowed the body a participation herein
with the soul : Mfrafto\rjv, ro7s re <r<a-
fj-affiv dfAoitas Troiovcn rais ^/vxo^s-fK M* "
ls ifipwas, e/c Se rjpuxav els Sal-
, at

XP V V iro\\< Si aperris

b\(yai fj.ev er t

Orac. Defect. How different from all
these schemes is what the Gospel pro-
poses concerning Christ Jesus; that
this man offered one sacrifice for sins for
ever ; and, through the offering of his
body once for all, will perfect for ever
those who come unto God through him.
Heb. x. ii, 12, 14. Whence now
could the first preachers of the Gospel
have these things? No wisdom then
in the world would have suggested
any such doctrine to them. That the
prophecies indeed obscurely, like a
light shining in a dark place, foretold
them, is true; that their Master, be-
ginning from Moses and all the prophets,
had expounded unto them in ai 'I the Scrip-
tures the things concerning himself, is
acknowledged; but, as this exposition
was entirely different from all that

PREFACE. 340

from the beginning, throughout all ages, that it must be
thought to have been appointed by God. In the Old Testa-
ment, a morality the very same, though not so fully ex-
plained and enforced to the perfection in which he who
came not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfil them,
taught with authority how what they read in the law was
to be understood, to direct both the thoughts of their hearts
and the actions of their lives : there is a series of legal in-
stitutions, such as we may see many reasons to think no
legislator from human wisdom would have thought of and
contrived 11 ; yet in many points so plain a schoolmaster to
bring those to whom they were given unto Christ ', so clearly
referring to things that were to come and be revealed, as
plainly to indicate, that there was more than human fore-
sight and design in them. In a word, in both Testaments
there are such prophecies of things that were to be, and of
some that are yet to come; such a fulfilling of all that is
completed, and thence so reasonable an assurance that there
shall be a performance of what remains to be fulfilled in its
season, as must give every considerate reader, whether
learned or unlearned, a steadiness of belief better grounded
than to be shaken by the disputes we can have concerning
the canon of Scripture; when it was settled ; by whom these
or those books were particularly written ; what erratas have
crept into some copies in some texts ; in all which, and many
other disquisitions of a like nature that may be started, how-
ever we may find that the Scriptures, in their being com-
mitted unto men, have been a treasure so put into earthen
vessels, as to furnish evidence enough that the excellency of
them is not of man k ; yet there are contents in them, which,
although the miracles done to bear testimony to them, were
done in an age long since past, so that we may carelessly
overlook them, nevertheless will force us to allow, that the

the Rabbles of the Jews had opined, their preaching this Gospel ; these

and all their doctors, learned in their things must put it out of all doubt

law and Scriptures, contended for; that that this doctrine was not of man, and

these things, thus hid from the wise and that it was of God.
prudent, should at once be brought to h See Connect, vol. iii. b. xii. p.

light by babes, be preached uniformly 253. Not to remark both of sacrifices

and consistently by a set of men that of the living creatures, see vol. i. b. i.

had no human learning ; and the truth p. 50. and also of circumcision, that it

of them be attested by the author of is most impossible to give any probable

them visibly raising himself from the reasonable grounds of their first insti-

dead, and going up into heaven, and tution, other than that they were ap-

by the preachers of his doctrines being pointed by God.

approved of God, in the many mira- > Gal iii. 24.
cles wrought by them

at the time of k 2 Cor. iv. 7.

350 PREFACE.

books of Scripture are such as could not have come merely
from man, but must be from God.

The original and progress of language is a subject that has
been treated by many writers. The learned seem mostly in-
clined to think, that God put into the minds of our first pa-
rents all such words, and a knowledge of the meaning of
them, as could be necessary for their conversation with one
another. They represent, that the allowing them to be
made sociable creatures implies necessarily that they were
in actual possession of all words instantly to communicate
a variety of sentiments. But I confess I do not see the con-
sequence to be a necessary one : they began life, I appre-
hend, without any stock of actual knowledge ; they grew
gradually into knowledge, and, by like advances, came to
think of, and make words, to signify what they wanted to
name and converse upon, The allowing them to be able to
do this as early and as variously as they wanted it, and to
improve it as fast as their knowledge increased, answers
every social demand we can suppose as fully, and more na-
turally, than to imagine them full of innate words before
they had acquired the sentiments, or observation of the
things, which were to be intended by such words to be
spoken of. But it is a subject I have at different times so
far treated, that I do not see I need add any thing to clear
it 1 . As to the opinion of some writers, that our first parents'
minds were filled with original words, that expressed to
them (what they could not otherwise know) the very na-
tures of things, so as to enable them to speak, and thence
to think, philosophically of them ; and that the Hebrew was
originally a language of this sort it is romantic and irra-
tional. That there are words of a sound corresponding to what
the ear hears, when the object denoted by them is presented
to us, is unquestionable ; and the using words of this make
properly, is thought an elegance in many writers. Virgil
is remarked to have thrown the sound of the thing he writes
of sometimes over a whole line : thus in the following
verse he is observed to sound, as it were, the trumpet he
speaks of:

JEre ciere viros martemque accendere cantu.

Virg. jEn. vi.

And in another place, to express the very beat of the horses'
feet on the ground, he supposes them to move upon :

1 Connect, vol. i. b. ii. vol. ii. b. ix. See the following treatise, chap. Hi.

PREFACE. 351

Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.

Id. jEn. viii.

Homer's TTO\V $Aoi'o-/3oto daXdao-rjs sounds to the ear both the
hollow roar of the rising wave, and the crash of its waters
breaking upon the shore. Single words may sometimes
affect the ear in like manner. The Hebrew word nil, ruach,
which signifies wind, may be thought to sound the rushing
noise made by that element, and many like instances may
be had from divers languages : but will any one say, that
the philosophical natures of the things thus described are in
any wise indicated by any word, part, or the whole of any
such descriptions? Words are but sounds : it is easy to con-
ceive how, by arbitrary agreement, different sounds may come
to denote such things as are intended to be meant by them ;
but to say any particular sound has a necessary connection
or relation to the essence or nature of one particular thing
more than of another, is a confusion we could not fall into,
if we did not overlook some particular in the train of think-
ing that leads us into it. Allowing the word create to denote
the producing things out of nothing, Creator may signify
Him who made all things, and is God: but the word can
have no such reference from any thing in the nature of the
word; but merely from its being first established, that to
create shall be the sound to signify this act of making things
have existence. From such known designation, bara in He-
brew m ; creamt in Latin ; any other word in any other lan-
guage, appointed to denote the exercise of this act of power,
shall equally have this signification, and without such ap-
pointment no one sound can have it, in the nature of things,
any one more than any other. The manner in which Adam
and Eve were brought into the world, duly considered, will
lead us to suitable thoughts of the rise and improvement of
their language. If they could be conceived instantly to
have talked copiously of all things, before time and expe-
rience had learned them to know them, there would be
reason to think that they had words for such conversation
not of their own inventing. But Moses hints to us nothing
of this nature ; the contrary appears most plainly throughout
his narration : and accordingly many expressions occur in
his Hebrew, of which I apprehend the following words,
Tlie Lord is a man of war, may be one instance ; which hint,

, Gen. i. i. that shouteth by reason of wine, Psalm

n nnrnn WM mrr, Exod. xv. 3. Ixxviii. 65. that neither of them can be

I may say of this expression, as also of imagined to express any thing of the

another that occurs later, wherein God nature of the power of God : rather

is represented to be like a mighty man human imagination, struck with the

352 PREFACE.

that in the most early times, the expressions used had their
rise not from any innate sentiments of the natures of things,
nor from words innate, that could speak to men concerning
things further than what they had felt, seen, or heard, and
agreeably thereto conceived and understood of them. As to
such words as God was pleased to speak to our first parents
in the beginning of their lives ; I have considered what,
I think, must be admitted concerning them : and that
names made from words agreed to signify qualities of things,
may denote the natures of things so named, so far as to
tell us, that they are reputed to have the qualities expressed
by the words which are given for names to them, may
reasonably be allowed p . If I know nabal in Hebrew to
signify to be of no value or moment, I may possibly conclude a
man called by that name to be one of that character ^ ; but
had any other word than nabal been the verb to signify the
having this character, the sound nabal might have conveyed
a very different idea to me. It is the same of all other cir-
cumstances of things, which their names can hint to us.
If terra be the allowed word to signify earth, the saying of
a person, that he is terrestris, may speak him to be earthy;
but had the first agreed idea, annexed to terra, been what
we call heaven, it is evident nothing in nature would have
prevented terrestris being of a signification opposite to what
is now understood by it. What a learned writer very clearly
thought upon this subject, he has expressed as intelligibly ;
" there is," he says, " between sounds and things no rela-
" tion r : words signify things, from no other than the arbi-
" trary agreement of men. It is evident that language is
" not natural, but instituted :" " that the human organs
" being admirably fitted for the formation of articulate
" sounds, these, with the help of reason, might in time lead
" men to the use of language ; I own it imaginable that
" they might 8 ." The judicious author would, I think, after
all this, not have imagined that, without an inspiration of
language from God, mankind might have lived a series of
generations not having a sufficient use of it, if he had hap-
pened to consider the steps and gradual progress, in which

terror of a man of war, coming forth majesty infinitely beyond what these

armed to the battle ; or of the terrible words convey to us, been at all intended,

fury of a giant, awakened, refreshed See hereafter, chap. ii.

with wine, furnished the ideas that P See Connect, vol. ii. b. ix.

occasioned these expressions. Other Q i Sam. xxv. 25. Connect, ibid,

words, very different, would have been r See Revelation examined with Can -

used, had a natural description of the dour, vol. i. p. 36.

tremendous power of God, terrible in s Ibid. p. 37.

PREFACE. 353

Moses represents our first parents coming into their know-
ledge of themselves and the world r .

The reader will find me in the following sheets to have
had great assistance from Mr. Pope's very excellent Essay
upon Man. The poet himself confesses, that he. could not
have expressed his thoughts with that force and conciseness
in prose as he could in verse u . As to myself, 1 am sure I
should have lost the reader a pleasure, and the subject an
advantage, had I used only my own language : what

loft had thought
would have come far short of being

so well express'd.

I wish I could have had the like assistance of this powerful
pen for some other sentiments which I have endeavoured
to defend ; but in these I have ventured to desert the poet,
thinking him to have some lines that require correction
Speaking of the primaeval state of mankind, he seems to re-
present their only guidance to have been the light of nature ;
he says,

The state of nature was the reign of God x .

He in no wise supposes man in his first estate to have began
his being under the especial direction of a revelation, but
rather, that

To copy instinct then was reason's party.

And he sends our early progenitors to learn arts and sciences
from the animal world, sooner than we can think the animal
world could be so considered as to afford them this know-
ledge 2 . In like manner he appears to think, that sacrifices

t See Revelation Examined, p. 51 who, primus per artem movit agros,

61. Virgil, learned of the mole to plough,

u See what the author says in the Pope, ver. 178. or that Cain formed

design of the poem. the plan or buildings of his city Enoch,

x Ep. iii. v. 147. Gen. iv. 17. from any observations of

y Ver. 171. the bee, her little cells, lodgments,

z Solomon indeed bids his sluggard and structures, is a wild imagination ;

Go to the ant, consider her ways, and be and, I dare say, had Solomon had no

wise, Prov. vi. 6. And it is natural ships to send to Ophir until men had

to think of Solomon, who had searched learned

deep into nature, (see i : Kings iv. 33.) fl/ ^ lim nautilus to sail

that he should offer this instruction. g j ^ ^ and cafch the

But to think of mankind, that they driving gale; Pope, ver.i 79 .

had not sought out many inventions, but

were without work, device, and con- he would have brought no gold to Je-

trivance of their own, until they had rusalem. Men had invented a great

observed the instinct of the creatures, many arts of their own before they

is extremely improbable. That he, could observe what in any wise cor-

354

PREFACE.

of the living creatures were not offered in the first times :
he represents, that the shrine was now with gore unstained*,
that unbloody stood the harmless priest^. He has these and
some other sentiments in the third epistle, which to me do
not seem entirely to accord to other parts of his poem. If
I might guess from one maxim hinted,

go, and thus o'er all the creatures sway,
Thus let the wiser make the rest obey c ;

he seems to opine superior understanding to give a right of
dominion ; a thought spread so largely in the imagination
of his admired statesman d , whom he styles

responded to them in the creatures,
though we may perhaps well allow,
that when they thus came to look from
themselves to the creatures, reflections
might arise to teach them to correct
art by nature, and to add to their own
inventions a regularity and improve-
ment which otherwise they might not
have thought of.

a Pope, ibid. ver. 157.
b Ver. 1 58.
c Ver. 195,196.

d Lord Bolingbroke hints to us, that
' the Author of nature has mingled
' among the societies of men a few,
' and but a few, of those on whom
' he is graciously pleased to bestow
' a larger proportion of the ethereal
1 spirit, than is given in the ordinary
' course of his providence to the sons
' of men. These are they who en-
1 gross almost the whole reason of the
' species, who are born to instruct, to
'guide, and to preserve; who are de-
' signed to be the tutors and the guard-
' ians of human kind." See Letter
on the Spirit of Patriotism, p. 10. I am
at a loss what to say of this random
sentiment : it seems to me to want
more explication, and the application
of it to be guarded and regulated be-
yond what one would expect of any
thing said by a wise man. If the ethe-
real genii of the age happen in any
country not to have either the reins of
government, nor the chair, seat, or
bench, to guide, direct, and give law to
mankind; and surely many of them
often have not; and I can apprehend
it sometimes for the 'good of the
world that they have not ; there is a
far more useful principle to be thought

of, than that these wise should try to
make the rest obey, namely, that every
one should study to be quiet, and mind
his own business, in the duties of that
station in life that happens to belong to
him. It must undoubtedly be a great
blessing to the world, when those who
have the power over others are the
truly wise ; but the happiness of man-
kind can never have any settlement,
unless those who may not attain what
they may happen to think their genius
most fit for, know how to govern
themselves wisely, and to be patterns
to others to learn the same thing.
The ethereal gentlemen, acting other-
wise, have often occasioned great con-
vulsions to the world : and many times,
when they get the power they strive
for, and make the rest obey, they are
neither the public blessing they think,
nor perhaps do they do any great and
real good even to themselves. Our
author's sentiment seems no better
than a not-well-digested refinement of
a notion to be found amongst the
heathen disputants ; vi^. that mankind
are born, some with endowments to
rule and govern, others with capacities
fit for servitude only : that, where the
rulers of states find such as, born for
servitude, will not submit to it, a war
upon these is but a lawful hunting, to
take men, as we do, by a like exercise,
the beasts of the field, to sort and re-
duce them to their proper application.
Nimrod was perhaps a mighty hunter
of this sort, and hereby raised himself
his kingdom, Gen. x. 9. But how far
any thing of this nature can be useful
or right, I shall submit to further con-
sideration.

PREFACE. 355

his friend, his genius

Master of the poet and the song 6 ;

that I should think much of what we find from about the
I47th line of the third epistle, to the 21 6th, was written
upon anecdotes given to the poet, and, in respect to him
that gave them, well ornamented : but they have not that
firmness and stability, which can be given to nothing but
what is true. It would be going absolutely from the subject
I am concerned in, to examine all Mr. Pope's positions
which might be here stated. One of them, indeed, I am
more particularly concerned in, namely, the origin of sa-
crifices. I have supposed sacrifices of the living creatures to
have been appointed from after our first parents' transgres-
sion ; and what I have offered upon this topic has been
largely replied to. I hope I shall not mispend a few pages,
if I endeavour to clear this matter.

It is argued that sacrifices of the living creatures were
not made in the most early ages: that they did not com-
mence until after mankind eat flesh : that we need not ima-
gine them to have had their rise from a positive command
of God ; for that there is weakness enough in human na-
ture for us to opine, that mankind might invent this service
without any command enjoining the use of it. All these
points have been treated by a very ingenious writer f ; an
answer to whom will, I hope, be a sufficient reply to all
that can be objected upon this topic. And my answer hereto
is, that Abel unquestionably offered a sacrifice of an animal
or living creature ; that he did it in obedience to a command
of God ; and consequently that the original of this institution
was not of human contrivance.

I. Abel, I say, offered a sacrifice of a living creature.
Abel, Moses tells us, brought of the firstlings of his flocks, and
of the fat thereof %: this offering was made before the i3Oth
year of the world h , and is indeed the first sacrifice the
Scripture mentions. That Abel's was a sacrifice of a living
creature is, I think, to be proved both from Moses's express
account of it, and from what is said upon it by the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

Moses's account begins with the offering of Cain : Cain
brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord 1 .
It is plain, nothing animate was intended in Cain's oblation :

e Epist. iv. ver. 363. h Adam was but 130 when Seth

f See Philemon to Hydaspes, Letter was born after Abel was killed, Gen.

v. v. 3.

S Gen. iv. 4. * Gen. iv. 3.

VOL. II. A a

35(5 PREFACE.

it was an offering of com or herbs, the produce of the
ground, and of nothing more : and it will be observed, that it
is accordingly called minchah^, the word often used for a
meat offering or oblation of things inanimate, in distinction
to the sacrifice of a living creature 1 . But Abel brought of the
firstlings ofhisfiock, and the fat thereof: the words that fol-
low are to be observed ; And the Lord had respect unto Abel,
and to his offering ; the tc\ >:e eel minchatho u : so

that the word minchah is here also used, to speak of Abel's
offering, as it was of Cain's. Wherein then did they differ \
or why should we think Abel's offering to be a sacrifice of a
living creature, when it is thus hinted to be a minchah?
The learned are herein very diligent to exert themselves.
Grotius observes, that the word we render the fat thereof
may signify the milk thereof, and would think that Abel did
not sacrifice a lamb, but perhaps only some wool and cream
of the lactage and growth of the firstlings of his fiockv. I
answer; learned men will seem to say something for any
singularity they have a mind to support, and Grotius is
herein remarkable in this particular : but it is observable,
that he lays the stress of what he would argue upon ex-
plaining a word not material to the argument, but says no-
thing upon some other words, on which the true meaning
of the place most absolutely turns. The word we translate
fat may signify mitt:, or must be rendered fat, as the sense
and context, when it is used, requires; but the words here
to be principally considered are, of the firstlings of his fiocfa.
The firstling or firstlings of beasts, of cattle, of the herd, or of
the flock, are expressions very common in Moses r ; and the
question is, whether, wherever he speaks of an offering of
firstlings, he means any thing but an offering of the living
creatures so called ? Whether in Moses's language, had Abel
offered only wool, and milk or cream, the expression must not
have been, he brought of the wool, milk or cream of the first-
lings ofhisfiock, an offering to the Lord? And whether, sup-
posing the word we render fat may signify mi/A*, the words
of Moses here used, he brought of the firstlings ofhisfiock, and
the milk thereof, would not have denoted, that he brought

'ts-a ]V 3' Annot. in loc.

mrrb. P Grotius observes these to have

1 See Levit. ii. i, 4, 5, 15. vii. 9, 10. been thought very ancient sacrifices

xiv. 10. Numb. XT. 3 6. xxviii. 5. by the heathen writers, ibid,

et sexeent. al. in loc, "l I:HS rmaao Gen. iv. 4.

m Gen. iv. 4. r Lev. xxrii. 26. Numb, xviii. 15.

n The Hebrew words are, *n Deut. xv. 19. Numb. iii. 41. Deut.

am. 6. xiv. 23, fitc.

PREFACE. 357

both the living creatures and their milk also ? But a further
question is, whether firstlings were ever reckoned but by the
males only 9 ? If they were reckoned thus only, our learned
annotators mistake most ridiculously. Abel, I apprehend,
brought of his young rams unto the Lord, and the lactage
of his rams : our learned disputants would be as well fed,
as they would teach us, if they had nothing else to eat till
they gave up this absurdity. In a word, Moses's expression
can in no wise signify any thing else but that Abel brought
a living animal of his flock an offering unto the Lord : for,

As to Abel's offering being called a minchah, that is easy
to be accounted for : the word minchah is indeed often used
sacrificaUy to denote an inanimate offering, in opposition to the
sacrifice of a living creature : but it has also a more general
acceptation. It is the word used of Jacob's present to his
brother Esau* ; and again, for the present sent out of Canaan
to Joseph u : it is well translated, when used in this sense, by
the Greek word bvpov, a gift : the Apostle thus renders it x .
In this general sense it is and may be used of all sacrifices
both animate and inanimate ; for every sacrifice is, in this
sense, a minchah, oupov, a gift, or present unto the Lord ;
though every minchah, or gift, is not a sacrifice of a living
creature.

Having thus far shewn that Moses must be understood to
express Abel's offering to be of a living creature, I come
now to consider, that the Apostle plainly tells us, that this
was his meaning. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
tells us of Abel's offering, that it was dvvia, i. e. the obla-
tion of a creature slain Y. I laid great stress upon the inspired
writer's using this term 2 . I am answered, that it is noto-
rious that the word Ova-la is several times used in Scripture
for an inanimate oblation: and the ingenious writer above
mentioned cites for his assertion Lev. ii. i. a Undoubtedly he
might have cited many other passages. His mistake is, he
cites the Septuagint translation for Scripture ; not consider-
ing that the translators, not being infallible, might err in

s See Exod. xiii. 12. than, that of Abel, Heb. xii. 24. that

t Gen. xxxii. 13, \<). of Abel; he does not mean Abel's

u Gen. xliii. n. blood, or the blood shed by the death

x Heb. xi. 4. eiri -rots Sapois avrov. of Abel, for Abel's death was no sacri-

y vffiav "A/SeA -rrpoff^veyKs, ibid. T ficeforsin; but the blood of Abel was

might, I think, here observe, that the the blood that Abel offered in his Qv-

Apostle elsewhere expressly calls Abel's <na, or sacrifice, which, though accept-

offering an offering of blood. Alluding ed by God, as he had commanded it,

to the blood of Christ, by whose death was but a shadow in comparison to

we have the forgiveness of sins, he the sacrifice of Christ.

says, Ye are come to the blood of z See Connect, vol. i. b. ii. p. 50.

sprinkling, which speaketh better thinga a Phil, to Hydasp. Letter v. p. 32.

358 PREFACE.

their translation. The translators of the Septuagint were
extremely careless in their use of this word : they render the
third verse of the fourth chapter of Genesis, rjveyKev Kd'Cv CLTTO
T&V Kapjr&v rrjs yf/s Ovvtav ro> Kvp(<*>, Here they call Cain's
offering, which is described and allowed to be of the fruits of
the ground only, Ovcriav, a sacrifice or mactation : but then it is
to be remarked, that the Apostle herein particularly corrects
them, removes the word 6vcriav, misapplied by them, and uses
it of Abel's sacrifice only, and not of Cain's offering b . The
inspired writers of the New Testament are known generally
to cite the Old Testament according to the Septuagint ver-
sion, and where they do so, it is evident they did not think
the expression importantly faulty : but when, in any parti-
cular passage, an Apostle thus remarkably varies and corrects
the diction of the Septuagint, ought we not to think he ob-
served an impropriety, and designed to amend it ? 0wi'a is in
many places of the Septuagint version used to signify inani-
mate offerings ; but the Septuagint were not inspired writers,
and therefore ought to stand corrected by those who were.
The word dva-ta occurs frequently in the New Testament :
but although, after the legal sacrifices of the Old Testament
were done away, the sacred writers of the New adopted the
word Ovcria, to use it in a spiritual sense, to express the mak-
ing our bodies a living sacrifice^ ; to represent our charity to

b I would take away all possible Testam. And to its here having this

ambiguity that can be supposed in signification agrees what follows ; Abel

the Apostle's expression, and would brought dv<riav ir\fiova irapa Kdiv : the

therefore observe, that should any one preposition irapa is used in the New

imagine the Apostle's words to be ellip- Testament to signify prceter, besides,

tical ; that the words may be taken, more than, over and above. Thus St.

by faith Abel offered a more excellent Paul, guarding the Galatians against

sacrifice than Cain's, i. e. sacrifice ; that receiving the observances of the Jewish

the word Qvffiav may as well be un- law superadded to the Christian reli-

derstood at the end of the period, as gion, most solemnly warns them not

inserted in the beginning: I answer, to receive any thing that should be

it is impossible so to construe the Apo- preached to them, trap' b fvrjyyehiffd-

stle, his words being, iriffTfL ir\eiova /J.e6a, or irap 6 irapa\d/3eT, Gal. i. 8,

Ovcriav "Aj8e\ irapa Kdiv irpoff-fiveyKe. 9. They were to receive no doctrines,

Were this the meaning, it should be as gospel, more than, over and above,

irapa rov Kdiv. But we say, a more ex- what St. Paul had preached to them.

cellent sacrifice; where do we find And thus Abel's Qvffiav was ir\fiova

ir\eiova to signify more excellent 2 Things irapa Kdiv. Cain had offered only in-

that are more excellent are called ra animate gifts : Abel probably had

Sia0e'poz/Ta, Rom. ii. 18. Phil. i. 10. A offered these also; for these often ac-

more excellent way is, /co0' virepfioXty companied the burnt-offering: but

6Sbv, i Cor. xii. 31. A more excellent Abel's Qvffia was something over and

name is Sia^opdarepov 6vo/j.a, Heb. i. 4. besides these, it was the mactation of an

and a more excellent ministry is 8ia<popa)- animal ; and in the not having this

repas \eirovpyias, Heb. viii. 6. But added, Cain came short of what ought

TrAeiW signifies more, amplior, says to have been done by him.

Stephens, Concord. Grgeco-Lat. Nov. c Rom. xii. i.

PREFACE. 359

be a sacrifice acceptable unto God d ; to exhort to offer the sa-
crifice ofpraise e &c. I say, although, after animal sacrifices
were ceased, the one real sacrifice being offered, which alone
could take away sin f , inspired writers did use the word Ova-ia
in a spiritual sense, to signify our giving ourselves up to per-
form many of the commanded duties of the Christian reli-
gion, sacrificing ourselves in them truly to serve God in
spirit and in truth; yet, I think, they did not use the term
Qvffia of any sacrifices of the Old Testament, but of such only,
wherein there was the shedding of bloods ; preserving it an
allowed truth of all revealed religion from the beginning of
the world, that without shedding of blood there had been no
declared remission of sin .

II. The second point I am to consider is, that Abel's offer-
ing his sacrifice was an obedience to some divine com-
mand, some explicit injunction given by God: and, I con-
fess, that to me a most unanswerable argument that it was
so, is Abel's being said by the Apostle to have made his
offering by faith, Heb. xi. I have already argued, that the
faith, concerning which the Apostle wrote this chapter, sup-
poses, in all the instances he gives, some express declaration
or direction from God; the believing and paying obedience
to which is the faith set forth arid recommended to us h . I
have shewn this to be the fact in the case of Rahab, when
she entertained the spies at Jericho 1 . My ingenious adversary
thinks otherwise 1 * ; but with how little reason, I must en-
tirely submit to the reader's impartial consideration : he
would argue of Enoch, as he reasons of Rahab 1 ; he opines
Enoch to have obtained his translation to heaven, not upon
account of his receiving and believing any particular decla-
ration by an express revelation from God to him, but upon

A Phil. iv. 1 8. deed inanimate, should be salted: but

e Heb. xiii. 15. having ordered this, it adds further,

f See Heb. x. with all thy offerings thou shalt offer

S See Matth. ix. 13. xii. 7. Luke ii. salt. The word for thine offerings is

24. xiii. i. Acts vii. 41, 42. i Cor. x. ^inp, a word used of a sacrifice of

18. Heb. v. i. vii. 27. viii 3. ix. 9. an animal, Numb, xxviii. 2. as 71"ij?

&c. I know but one place in the rtDmn Levit. i. 2. So that the text

New Testament where Owia may provides, first, that all offerings inani-

seem to be used of an inanimate offer- mate shall be salted; and then further,

ing of the law : our Saviour says, every that salt shall be also used in all sacri-

sacrifice (iraffa Ovaia are the words of fices: and the word Qvaia is used by

the Evangelist) shall be salted with salt, St Mark, referring to the law given in

Mark ix. 49. The law here referred the latter part of the verse,

to is Levit. ii. 13. which may be h Connect, vol. i. b. ii. p. 52.

thought to be the law of the meat- i Vol. iii. b. xii. p. 258, 259, &c.

offering. But I would observe, that k See Phil, to Hydasp. Letter v. p.

the text in Leviticus first provides, 39.

that the meat-offering, which was in- 1 Id. ibid.

360 PREFACE.

account of the general tenor and conduct of his life, that he
was a man of eminent virtue, faithfully attached to perfect
holiness in the fear of God, assuring himself that he should
have a reward for thus doing. I answer, had the hopes of
Enoch been only the general and rational expectations arising
from a moral life, he had not been herein in any wise above
others eminent for faith, which is not an act of mind paying
regard to arguments arising from considering what may ap-
pear intrinsecally, without external testimony, to be in reason
true; but faith cometh by hearing, faith is the believing
something that is testified or declared to us n . Accordingly,
the author of Ecclesiasticus, who observes of Enoch, that he
pleased God, and was translated, does not ascribe his being
translated to his being more and above others a man of a
righteous or moral life, but tells us, he was made an example
of repentance unto all generations . We should perfectly un-
derstand what is here suggested, if we may say a special re-
velation was made to Enoch, that man should have life for
ever in another world, if they sought it believing, through
his name by repentance, to receive remission of sins P. If Enoch
embraced and testified unto others this faith, and it pleased
God to confirm unto the world, that what he had declared
by Enoch was true; by granting to Enoch not to die and
fall like other men, but, without tasting death, to be received
to the life to come which was published, and by him be-
lieved, and declared according to the word of God made
known to him ; herein we shew Enoch to have been
literally, according to the words of the author of Ecclesiasti-
cus, set forth an example of repentance unto all generations :
and as clearly according to the full meaning of the Apostle's
expression, by faith, believing and doing according to what
had been especially revealed to him, was translated that he
should not see deaths.

There is no point upon which many able and very learned
writers appear more fondly mistaken, than in not truly stat-
ing the doctrine of faith, according to the Scriptures. It is
a favourite notion with them to divide the states mankind
have been in, into that of natural religion and that of the
Gospel : they call the state of creation, or natural religion, the
dispensation of the Father; the state of the Gospel the dispensa-
tion of the Son of God : and they argue the former, natural
religion, to be a necessary preparation for the latter r . But

m Rom. x. 17. q Heb. xi. 5.

n Vide quae sup. r The reader may see this way of

o Ecclus. xliv. 1 6. thinking fully stated by the late Dr.

P See Acts x. 43. Clarke, Serm. I.

PREFACE. 361

herein they certainly introduce a language very different
from the Scriptures : to come unto God, to seek God, to walk
with God, all these and other like expressions, in their Scrip-
ture meaning, signify to accede to that law which is from
God's mouth, to lay up his words in our hearts, to live ac-
cording to what God has revealed and commanded 8 ; the
fearing God and working righteousness, according to what is
called natural light, is not what is in Scripture designed by
those expressions. In like manner the dispensation of the Fa-
ther, in contradistinction to the dispensation of the Son, must be
the revelation of the Old Testament, as distinguished from the
revelation in the New. Our blessed Saviour's exhortation to
his disciples was, that as they had believed in God, so also
they would believe in him 1 : and the enforcing this particu-
lar duty is the great intendment of the whole Epistle to the
Hebrews: God at sundry times and in divers manners had
spoken to their fathers* : here now is the dispensation of the
Father, which the Scriptures recognize, and from hence the
Apostle endeavours to lead them to the dispensation of the
Son ; to what in these last days God hath spoken unto us by his
Son*, that they should take the more earnest heed to the things
which we have heard, not to neglect the great salvation, which
was begun to be spoken by the Lord himself, and was confirmed
unto us by them that heard him ; God also bearing them witness,
both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and
gifts of the Holy GhostY. He observed to them that, in obey-
ing Moses, they had not refused one that spake to them on
earth : he exhorts them now agreeably hereto, not to refuse
him who spake to them from heaven^: in a word, the whole
design of this Epistle is to set forth to the Hebrews, that faith
had always come by hearing ; that the foundation of all re-
vealed religion had in all ages been the receiving and be-
lieving the word of God; and the intent of the eleventh
chapter is to set before us a cloud of witnesses or examples
of this fact: and to suppose any one instance given by the
Apostle in this chapter to be intended to hint any other
faith, than the belief of some explicit revelation, is to sup-
pose the Apostle to have deviated from his argument to
something entirely foreign, if not opposite to it.

But it will be here asked, What proof, or shadow of proof,,
can we bring of Enoch's having had any express revelation
from God ? I answer, I . We are informed that Enoch pro-

s See Job v. 8. Psalm cv. 4, 5. Isa. u Heb. i. i.

Iviii. 2. viii. 19, 20. Deut. viii. 6. x Ver. 2.

2 Kings xxiii. 3, &c. Job xxii. 22. y Chap. ii. i 3.

t -John xiv. i. z. Heb. xii. 25. i

362 PREFACE.

phesied of the judgment to come, that the Lord would come
with thousands of his saints &c. a 2. Moses informs us, that
in Enoch's days men began to call upon the name of the Lord^:
upon which words I would observe, j. That the expression
in this place means, that at this time began the distinction
of mankind's being called, some the sons of God, others the
sons of men c . 2. I have indeed observed, that the words
Kara beshem Jehovah was an expression used of Abraham
and his descendants, and signified that they invoked God, in
the name of the Lord who had appeared to Abraham^: but I
do not think this expression to have been thus used before
the days of Abraham e. 3. A very learned and judicious
writer observes, and gives instances, that the word hochal*,
which we translate began, may signify had hopes : and he re-
marks, that the Septuagint so understood and translated it.
OVTOS qXTTLcrev 7TLKa\la-Oai TO ovofjia Kvpiov TOV 0eoir to Enoch
then hope was given in his being called by the name of the
Lord his God. I can see no reason to reject what this able
writer offers upon the text : and we may consider upon it,
that the hope was undoubtedly great unto whom it was
given to be called by this name : why ought we not to rea-
son concerning them, as we may of ourselves 1 Beloved,
ichat manner of love was herein bestowed upon them, that they
should be called the sons of God h ! They were now the sons of
God: undoubtedly it did not appear what they shall be; but

a See Jude 14, 15. may be often rendered by the gerund
b Gen. iv. 26. in do, in Latin {leamor} dicendo, is also
c See Connect, vol. i. b. i. p. 25, 26. many times to be rendered by the ge-
d See Connect, vol. i. b. v. p. 176. rundindwrn, [leamor] addicendum, (see
I have been told that I must be thought Noldius in Partic.) and may signify to
to err in my giving this particular in- the sayiny , when thus used, it implies
terpretation of the words Kara beshem* a proceeding from what was said be-
lt is said, that the xviiith chapter of fore, to something further. We often
the first Book of Kings, ver. 26. shews, pray unto God in the name of our Sa-
that the expression signifies to call on viour ; but we often proceed further,
the name. The priests of Baal, we and say, O Christ, hear us. In this
are there told, bjnrvoim l*npn manner, the priests of Baal invoked in
i:32 ^yin *inb called upon the name the name of Baal, to the saying, i. e.
of Baal, saying, O Baal, hear its. Are and proceeded even to pray, O Baal,
we not here told plainly, that their hear us. Kara shew, or Kara eel ahem,
saying, O Baal, hear us, was their may signify to invocate or call upon the
calling upon the name of Baal? Why name; but Kara be shem cannot admit
then must Kareau beshem Baal be this signification. See Connect, ubi
any thing more than they called upon sup.

the name of Baal? I answer, we are e Connect, vol. ii. b. vii. p. 346.
easily herein misled by our rendering f See Rutherforth's Essay on Virtue,

leamor, saying: had the participle been p. 297.

here used, aomarim, dicentes, there S The Hebrew verb brp is speravit :

would have been a greater plea for desiderio expectavit, &c.
what is objected to me : but the infi- h See I John iii. i .
nitive mood with le prefixed, though it

PREFACE. 363

as Enoch prophesied unto them, that the Lord cometh, with
ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment, it must be,
that all that had this hope of their calling, and held fast the
profession of it, knew that when he shall appear, they shall be
like him, for they shall see him as he is' 1 : when he who is their
life shall appear, they also shall appear with him in glory^.
We may surely hence well understand what was the particu-
lar revelation made to Enoch ; namely, a revelation of the
hope of another world, and the supposing him translated for
receiving and embracing this faith, and faithfully preaching
it to others, himself living an example of repentance according
to the tenor of it, is no more than supposing God to testify in
him to the world, that what he had published by him was
truth. Enoch was translated A. M. 987, which is 57 years
after Adam's death 1 : Enoch was born A. M. 622 m , above
300 years before the death of Adam : if we may suppose
Enoch to have received and preached the revelation of this
hope in about the middle of his life, we have the grounds
for what the reader will find me to have offered; namely,
that sometime before Adam died, God had given the hopes
of another world 11 .

III. I have to consider, that sacrifices of the living creatures
were not originally the invention of men. The writers that
would argue them to be such, carry us back to the times of
Orpheus, or of some other sage and wise personages of about
his age, who reformed and civilized the barbarous clans of
savage and uncultivated people, who overran the parts adja-
cent to them : they endeavour to shew us, that the first step
they took to humanize the minds of those they conversed
with, was to endeavour to dissatisfy them with the thoughts
of eating the living creatures, and to persuade them, that
taking away the life of any thing must be a violence that
could not make the so doing an acceptable sacrifice to God.
This, the poet tells us, was the endeavour of Orpheus in
particular :

Sylvestres homines sacer interpresque Deorum
Csedibus et foedo victu deterruit Orpheus,
Dictus ob hoc lenire tigres rapidosque leones.

Hor.

Orpheus is supposed to have lived about the Argonautic
times, later than A. M. 2700 : but what if he, and all the

i i John iii. 2. Connect, vol. i. b. i. p. 30.
k See Coloss. iii. m Tbid.

1 See the Table of the Lives and n See hereafter, near the end of the

Deaths of the Antediluvian Patriarchs, volume.

364 PREFACE.

reformers such as he was, had lived much earlier ; what if,
not really knowing the history of the beginning of mankind,
they had thought it a reasonable doctrine, very proper to re-
press and subdue the outrage and violence they saw the
earth full of, when men not only destroyed the beasts of the
field, but made as free with the lives of one another ; what,
I say, if they deemed it a doctrine that might be effectual
to put an end to these violences, to teach that the gods
could not be pleased with blood ; that the first sacrifices of
mankind were of the fruits of the earth, or mixtures of oil,
milk, and honey, of odoriferous spices, herbs, and gums, of
the leaves of trees, of nuts, acorns, and berries, of every
thing that men could offer innocuous, neither doing violence
to any thing to which God had given the breath of life, nor
to one another? Will it, because these doctrines have in
them what is agreeable to the humanity of our nature, and
might be thought reasonable to these men, who first taught
these tenets; will it, I say, hence follow, that what a well
warranted history relates to us to have been fact near 3000
years before, was mere fiction and fable, because it does not
accord to what was taught in these so much later times ?

If the natural tenderness and regret of human nature
against all appearance of barbarity were made use of to shew
how great a consternation it must have been to the first men,
at a time when the creatures were not their food , and it
could not but be more natural for them to say of every thing
living,

vitaque magis quam morte juvatis, Ovid.

when to see it living, must have been more agreeable as
well as more useful P, than to put it to death; what less than
a command from God, whenever they committed a sin, that
the sin might not remain, and lie at their door ), could have

The writers who would argue sa- comfort did they want or could expect

crifices of the living creatures to have concerning their work and toil of their

commenced from human institution, hands, because of the ground which the

would have it, that the eating flesh Lord had cursed ?
was before the flood ; that the com- P The heathen poets conceived that

mand to Noah was to regulate, not some creatures might be sacrificed upon

to give the first liberty to eat flesh, account of their destroying the fruits

See Philemon to Hydaspes, p. 55. of the earth, of the vines or trees,

Letter v. But what a mere pretence, or otherwise having been prejudicial

without shadow of foundation, this is, to men. See Ovid, Fastor. 1. i. Metam.

let any one consider, who will exa- 1. xv. But nothing of this sort can be

mine what Lamech said at the birth imagined to have been Abel's reason

of Noah, Gen. v. 29. If they had eat for offering of the firstlings of his flock,
flesh as freely before the flood, as after Q See Gen. iv. 7.
Noah had obtained a grant of it, what

PREFACE. 365

induced them to bring an innocent, and to them innocuous
animal, to offer its blood upon account of their own transgres-
sion ? Time and custom may reconcile us to almost any thing ;
but it is difficult to avoid the reflection, that when mankind
came first to this service, it would truly rent their hearts to
see, as it were, death, unto which they knew themselves must
one day come ; to have displayed before their eyes its pangs
and agonies, inflicted by themselves on a creature that had
no demerit ; merely because they had themselves committed
some offence against their God. Such a service could not
but cause them both to think upon the victim and upon
themselves. As to the suffering animal, how could they
avoid asking, What has this sheep done*? Upon themselves
they must look with confusion of face, that what flesh and
blood would naturally shrink back at, was without mercy to
be performed, purely upon account of their misdoings : one
would think, that whilst their minds were tender, (and they
ought carefully to have kept them so,) nothing could have
been enjoined them that could have been a more affecting
rebuke of sin, to raise in them hearty desires, if possible, to
sin no more, rather than to come often to repeat a service in
its nature so disagreeable ; to perform deliberately the rites of
it : one would think, not Cain only, but all mankind, would
have been glad to have avoided it, if the offering of the fruits
of the ground might have been accepted instead of it.

In fact, sacrifices appear to have been offered thousands of
years before any thing that can be cited concerning them
from heathen writers was written ; and in truth nothing
can be hence cited to shew us the reason of them or their
origin : sacrifices of the living creatures, as in the case of
Abel, were made ages before mankind had any thought of
eating flesh ; and consequently, none of the weak reasons
our ingenious writer supposes mankind might fall into, to
induce them to offer to the gods in their injudicious way of
thinking, part of what they experienced to be of sustenance
to themselves, could have any place in their minds at all.
From what is argued in the New Testament, the first sacri-
fices in the world came of faith, were made in obedience to
some divine command : they may be apprehended to be an
institution so dehortatory against sin, that even upon this
account they would appear a command worthy of God, to
creatures wanting to be strongly warned against it ; and
they bear such a reference to what was afterwards in reality
to take away sin, and they might so instructively prepare

r Quid meruistm oves, placidum pecus . Ovid.

366

PREFACE.

the world to receive the revelation of it, when it should be
more fully published, and to lead men to it; that, what is
said for its being supposed to be an human institution being
shewn to be frivolous and without foundation, I may, I
think, without further controversy, refer the reader to what
I have given as the reason of this institution, viz. that God,
having determined what should in the fulness of time be the
propitiation for the sins of the world, namely, Christ, who
through his own blood obtained us eternal redemption, thought
fit, from the time that man became guilty of sin, to appoint
the creatures to be offered to represent the true offering,
which was afterwards to be made for the sins of all men 8 .

8 See Connect, vol. i. b. i. p. 51.
My ingenious adversary (see Philemon
to Hydaspes, Letter v. p. 31.) thinks it
not reasonable to suppose that Abel
offered sacrifice for any sin of Adam's ;
and would argue, from St. Paul's hav-
ing said that sin is not imputed without
a law, Rom. v. 13. that there was no
law given in Abel's time that declared
death to be the punishment of any
sin but of the first transgression : and
consequently, that there could be no
reason that Abel should offer a sacri-
fice for any sin of his own. A little
observation may both explain St. Paul's
meaning, and clear the confusion raised
by my antagonist. The Apostle thus
argues : As by one man sin entered into
the world, and death by sin, AND so
(I should render it EVEN so) death
passed upon all men, for that all men
have sinned: for until the law sin was
in the world. The point to be observed
is, that the Scriptures conclude all men
under sin, Gal. iii. 22 ; affirm, that
there is no man on earth that sinneth
not, i Kings viii. 46. This therefore
being an allowed truth, that sin was in
the world until the law; that from
Adam unto Moses, not Adam and Eve
only, but every individual of their de-
scendants, had actual sins of their own,
the Apostle reasons, that there can be
no injustice pretended that eV rep 'ASa^u
Trdi/Tfs a.iroQvi](rKov(nv, that in Adam all
die, I Cor. xv. 22. e'(J>' $ irai/res T^apToj/'
Rom. v. 12. not in whom all sinned,
as our marginal reference would cor-
rect our version; for had this been
intended, it would have been ev q, like
ev r<p J A5o;U irdvTes airoBi'^a'Kova'iv' e0 5 $
is eo quod, in that, or because: as by one
man, says the Apostle, sin entered into
the world, and death by sin , KCU ovrtas

even so, in like manner, i. e. as de-
servedly, death hath passed upon all men.
The foundation of which reasoning is
plain : for death being the wages of sin,
and all men having done the works of
our first parents, having actually sinned
as well as they, we not only receive in
dying, but by our sins deserve, the
same wages. Having thus stated this
point, the Apostle proceeds to consider
an objection. But sin, says he, is not
imputed where there is no law. Never-
theless, death reigned from Adam to
Moses, even over them that had not
sinned after the similitude of Adam's
transgression,\er. 13, 14. The Apostle's
argument is so clear, I wonder it can
be mistaken. He allows, that sin is not
imputed where there is no law , which
indeed is exactly what he elsewhere
says, where no law is, there is no trans-
gression, Rom. iv. 15. For as St. John
observes, sin is the transgression ofalaw,
i John iii. 4. Nevertheless, says he,
notwithstanding all that may thus be
reasoned, and although none, like our
parents, have eat of the forbidden tree,
yet death hath reigned from Adam
down to Moses ; all have received the
wages of sin, and therefore in fact
all have sinned : and consequently, as
there would have been no sin, had
there been no law, there certainly has
been a law, which all men, every one,
has in many instances failed of living
up to, and in these failures every man
living, or that has lived, has had actual
sin : and thus the Apostle's argument
concludes directly contrary to my in-
genious correspondent. Abel had sin
as well as all other men; but he
would have had no sin, if he had not
lived under some law : Abel therefore
lived under the law of some revelation

PREFACE. 367

I have here endeavoured very largely a reply to what has
been objected to me upon this subject ; I thought it to re-
quire a full consideration : I would as freely defend or re-
tract any thing I have written, that other writers have
thought wrong, if I apprehended it alike material : but
where I think myself only misrepresented, or a controversy
to be rather sought for, than to be of any service to truth, I
wish to enjoy silence and quiet, rather than to trouble the
world with a pother of altercation that can be of no utility.
In some small points the reader may observe me to have varied
from myself: when I began my Connection, I too hastily con-
cluded, that God appeared to Cain*; I thought this a mis-
take when I wrote my second volume". I have in the en-
suing treatise followed what I apprehended upon second ex-
amination to be true x : and yet I let my error stand in later
editions of my first volume, as I at first printed it. I shall do
the same thing, as to what I differ in this treatise from what
I formerly conceived to be the situation of the garden of
Eden? : I would not, by having wrote, be confined from
growing wiser ; but hope the alterations of what I have
written may not be necessarily so many, but that, if I live
and have health to finish my Connection, they may be col-
lected and referred to in a page by themselves, and the
whole of what is printed continuing as it is, I may shew
myself at least just to the world, in not printing new edi-
tions of any thing that is mine, such as may depreciate any
former ones.

which appointed sacrifice for sin; and Rom. v. 16 18. &c. And thus Eve

upon sinning, that his sin might not damned none of her children ; for

remain and lie at his door, believing th^re was no necessity that any should

and obeying what God had commanded, thus terribly perish. All were to live

he offered his sacrifice, and therein by again : and to as many as would truly

faith obtained forgiveness of sin. strive to obtain it, power was given to

If it was not foreign to the point become the sons of God, to live unto

before us to proceed to the context, honour, to glory, to eternal happiness,

we might refute by it a calumny of But this is not the only instance of

lord Bolingbroke against Eve : he says, this unhappy writer's most unwar-

she damned her children before she rantable rashness : how dogmatically

bare them. Study of History, Letter he can abuse even the Scriptures, not

iii. p. 109. His lordship in no wise really knowing them, must be very

understood, how, not as the offence in evident to any one that will read Mr.

Adam, so also is the free yift in Christ, Hervey's most excellent Remarks on

Rom. v. 15. In Adam indeed all died, lord Bolingbroke' s Letters; a treatise

and so in Christ ah all all be made alive, worth every one's attentive considera-

i Cor. xv. 22. But we shall not only tion.

be made alive ; that might be given t Connect, vol. i. b. i. p. 2.

us, and we might live unto condem- u See vol. ii. b. ix. p. 525.

nation for our own sins : but the free x See hereafter, ch. iv.

gift aboundeth in the forgiveness of Y Connect, vol. i. b. i. See hereafter,

many offences unto justification of life, chap. viii.

368 PREFACE.

The chief point inquired into in the ensuing treatise is in-
deed the direct opposite to what I see stated by the author I
have often cited : " If we consider," says he, " the order of
" the sciences in their rise and progress, the first place be-
" longs to natural philosophy, the mother of them all, or
" the trunk, the tree of knowledge, out of which, and in
" proportion to which, like so many branches, they all
"grow 2 ." The Scriptures, I think, teach otherwise: the
first information man had came from hearing the word of
God a ; and the first error, that came into the world, arose
from our first parents opposing to it their first philosophy^ :
their thought was indeed low and mean, not deserving to be
called philosophy; but it was the supposed science of their
day, and they ventured to be led by it, contrary to what
God had commanded. If we proceed, the Scriptures shew
us wherein the word of God was to be to man the ground of
truth, and how human science, falsely so called, opposed to it,
has been, and may still be, the root of all error : and the
rightly determining how far we ought to begin under the
guidance of faith, and wherein and how we may proceed to
add knowledge to it, to prove and examine whether we be in
the truth, in contradistinction to what some contend, that we
must begin in knowledge, and hereby become perfect, is the
one question, which, rightly stated and examined, will, ac-
cording to what we determine concerning it, incline us to
Deism, or to embrace and see the reason of the revelation set
before us in the Scriptures ; concerning which, with regard
to myself, I will venture to say, I have studied them, not, as
lord Bolingbroke imputes to us, in order (i. e. right or
wrong determined) to believe; but, the more impartially I
examine, I find more and more reason to believe them to be
true, and accordingly, although I am a clergyman, I am
verily persuaded, I believe and profess in matters of religion
nothing but what, if I was a layman, I should believe and
profess the same. His Lordship says of the clergy, in his
round and large manner of affirming, that " in natural reli-
" gion the clergy are unnecessary ; in revealed they are dan-
" gerous guides 6 ." How far any will be guided by me, I
hope I shall always know myself so well, as to leave that to
their own choice. As to the inutility of my inquiries, and

z Lord Bolingbroke' s Letters to sir Treatise, chap. iv. v.

William Wyndham, and to Mr. Pope, b Ibid. chap. ix. See chap. v. vii.

p. 466. c Lord Bolingbroke, ubi sup. pag.

a Gen. ii. 15, 16. See the ensuing 531.

PREFACE. 369

also the impartiality of them, here I confess myself to wish,
as I think what I wish may be a good not absolutely ter-
minating upon myself, that the reader will consider, with as
unbiassed a freedom as I have written, how far he may ex-
empt me out of his lordship's most absolute sentence of re-
probation.

CANTERBURY,
June 2, 1753.

THE

CREATION AND FALL OF MAN.

THAT mankind have not been in this world, nor this
world itself been from eternity, may be proved by many
arguments from the nature, and from what is and has in
fact been the known state of the world in the diverse ages of
it a . But in what particular manner men at first began to be ;
where, and how they lived ; are points we can be certain of
no farther, than we have some authentic testimony declaring
them unto us.

The heathen writers have given us their conjectures upon
these subjects; but they are conjectures only b : some part of
what they offer might be admitted as probable, if we were
not better informed, that in the beginning things were not
done as they supposed : but, in having Moses's writings, we
have a real history of these matters; and, as I have else-
where made some observations upon his account of the
creation of the heavens and the earth, I would herein exa-
mine what he relates concerning the creation of mankind;
the manner and circumstances in which our first parents be-
gan their being, and the incidents which befell them ; hoping
that I may shew, that Moses's account may reasonably be

a See archbishop Tillotson, Serm. i. c Connect. Sacr. and Prof. Hist.

Wilkins, Nat. Rel. book i. c. 5. Pref. to vol. i.
b Diodor. Sic. p. 5. lib. i.

VOL. II. B b

THE CREATION AND

believed to set before us what were real matters of fact,
and that no part of what is related by him ought to be taken
to be apologue and fable, as some writers are fond of repre-
senting d .

That the subject I am attempting has many difficulties, I
am ready to confess ; and not willing to be too positive I can
remove them all : but as I apprehend the substance of what
I have to offer will be seen to carry an evident design to
give a reason for, and thereby to establish the principles of
revealed religion ; I persuade myself I shall find all that can-
dour, which I have long ago experienced the world not
unwilling to bestow upon a well-intended endeavour, con-
ducted, as I trust this shall be, without ill-nature or ill-
manners to other writers, however I may happen to differ
from them.

CHAP. I.

The Contents of the First and Second Chapters of Genesis ; and
how they are to be adjusted to each other.

THE first and second chapters of Genesis give us the
whole of what Moses relates concerning the creation of
mankind : and we shall see them to accord perfectly, the
one to the other, if we consider the first chapter to give
only a short and general account of this great transaction ;
and the second to be a resumption of the subject, in order to
relate some particulars bolonging to it, which in the con-
ciseness of the first relation were passed over unmentioned.

In the first chapter, Moses, having recorded the several
transactions of the five preceding days, begins the sixth day

d It is observable, that some years added no argument beyond what Dr.

ago the most forward writers expressed Burnet had before offered, now more

doubt and reserve in treating this sub- absolutely asserting, that the matter of

ject: Quadam esse parabolica in hac Moses's account is inconsistent with

narrationenequepenitus adlitteram exi- the character of an historical narration,

genda omnes fere agnoscunt : nonnulli and must, they say, convince all, who

etiam totum sermonem essevolunt VTTOTV- consider it without prejudice, that it is

irtaffiv art'ificiosam ad explicandas res ve- wholly fabulous or allegorical. See

ras, said Dr. Burnet, Archaeolog. p. Middleton's Exam. p. 135.
283. But we find writers, who have

FALL OF MAN. 373

with God's creating the cattle, and living creatures of the
earth e , and then adds his determination to make man : God
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let
them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth*. After this,
Moses tells us, that God effectuated his purpose : so God
created man in his own image; in the image of God created he
HIM S : unto which he adds, male and female created he them h .
The Hebrew words are as I have below transcribed them':
and they might be translated as I have underlined them :
the male and the female, he created THEM, i. e. he created
them both; not the male only, but the female also. The
words of Moses are very plain : he tells us that God, on the
sixth day, created the woman as well as the man; he does
not say that God created both at the same instant, nor in the
same manner; for this he distinctly considers in the next
chapter : but he here hints to us, that God made both the
male and the female within the time of this sixth day : and
Moses's expression gives no ground for the conceits con-
cerning Adam before Eve was taken out of him, in which
some writers have egregiously trifled k .

After both the man and the woman were created, God
blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every
living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold,
I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the

e Gen. i. 24, 25. ginal. Plato's fable of the Androgynes

f Ver. 26. (see Plat, in Conviv. vol. iii. p. 189.

g Ver. 27. edit. Serrani) shews us what sort of

h Ibid. traditions he met with in searching

i nnw N"U nap 21 "OT through the then ancient literature;

eos creavit etfceminam marem. and I should think it no unreasonable

k Some fanciful writers have repre- supposition, that a figment of this kind

sented, that the man was at first ere- might have its first rise in those early

ated of two bodies, a male and a fe- times, when the Egyptians and Phoe-

malej and that God of these made nicians began or made proficiency in

two persons, by dividing or separating disguising the plain narrations they

the one body from the other; and it found of the origin of things with

is generally said, that this was a fie- their fables and mythology. See Euseb,

tion of the Rabbins: but I should ap- Prsep. Evang. 1. i. c. 10. Connect, of

prehend it to be of a more early ori- Sacr. and Prof. Hist. vol. ii. b. viii,

374 THE CREATION AND

face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of
a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every
beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every
thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have
given every green herb for meat 1 . And now the evening and
the morning were the sixth day m . The sixth day was now
completed, and the seventh day began, on which God,
having finished the creation, rested from all the work which
he had made : and God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified
it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which he
had created and made n . These are the generations of the hea-
vens and of the earth when they were created .

Moses here ends his summary, or general account of the
creation : and here, I think, the dividers of our Bible into
chapters and verses should have ended the first chapter of
Genesis; and the second chapter should have begun with
these words, In the day that the Lord made the earth and the
heavens, &c.

The second chapter of Genesis being, as I have hinted, a
resumption of the argument treated in the first, in order to
set forth more explicitly some particulars which the first
chapter had only mentioned in the general, begins thus : In
the day that (i. e. when p ) the Lord made the earth and the hea-
vens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth,
and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had
not caused it* to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to
till the ground; nor 1 did a mist go up from the earth, and

1 Gen. i. 28 30. day following began with the morning

m Ver. 3 1 . This was the ancient sun.

Original way of computing the natural n Gen. ii. 2,3.

day : it began from the morning, pro- Ver. 4.

ceeded to the evening, and continued P Eo die, i. e. quando Dies tempus
until the next morning ; finished the in genere passim dicitur. Cleric, in loc.
preceding, and began the ensuing day : q We begin this sentence with the
thus the evening and the morning were particle for. The Hebrew text having
the day. Gen. i. 5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31. the particle 3 [ci], we put in for to
And in this way of computing the Jews answer it : but ci should be here render-
continued to their latest times: for ed nempe, quidem, indeed, not for; the
thus we are told of the end of the sab- sentence not being, for the Lord God had
bath, Matt, xxviii. T . The sabbath was not caused it to rain ; but rather, the
ending, as it began to dawn towards the Lord God had indeed not caused it to
first day of the week. The end of the rain.

night which had closed the sabbath r We render this paragraph, but there

was the end of the computed day : the went up a mist from the earth, in the

FALL OF MAN.

375

water the whole face of the ground: But the Lord God
formed man of the dust of the ground., and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And
the Lord God had 3 planted a garden eastward in Eden^ and
there he put the man whom he had formed. In this manner
Moses proceeds to reconsider the creation of man ; first ob-
serving, that of itself, or by any powers of its own, the earth
had produced nothing. It was an ancient opinion, and very
early in Egypt, where Moses had his birth and education,
that the earth originally of itself brought forth its fruits,
and plants, and trees, and all kinds of living creatures, and
men * : and some opined, that the natural fertility of the
ground for these purposes was put in action either by the
rain which fell from heaven, or by some moisture exhaled

affirmative; whereas the sense of the
place shews us, that Moses intended to
assert that God made all things, before
any natural powers were in activity to
be the cause of their production. The
Hebrew particle % ve, is here used,
and joins similar, i. e. negative sen-
tences. There was no man to till the
ground, nor mist went up from the
earth. The Arabic version has ob-
served the true meaning of the place,
rendering it, nee exhalatio ascendebat,
&c.

8 We say planted, in the perfect
tense : but the Hebrew perfect tense is
often used in the sense of a preterplu-
perfect, to speak of things done in a
time past. This the Syriac version
seems rightly to observe in a passage
like this in the I9th verse of this chap-
ter. We say, the Lord God formed out
of the ground every beast , as if God
then made them; whereas the beasts
were made some time before : the Sy-
riac version is rendered, and the Lord
God had formed . And thus we
should render the place before us : and
the Lord God had planted a garden ;
for the garden was undoubtedly planted
on the third day of the creation, when
God caused all the plants and trees
to spring out of the earth, Gen. i. i r,
12, 13. Vide Diodor. Sic'. Hist. lib. i.
p. 5. The Greeks had sentiments of
this kind from Egypt : for thus Euri-
pides,

'fls ovpav6s re yatd T' -f^v

'ETTC! 5'

irdvra K^vfSooKav els <pdos,
To SeVSpa, irrrji/o, Orjpas, otis ff

Twos re

In Menalippe. Fr. 22.
t The Roman poet seems to have been
in doubt between two opinions in this
matter; rather inclining to introduce
an opifex rerum into all the produce of
the whole creation ; but not absolutely
determining against the opinion of all
things arising from their natural seeds
in the earth, as soon as the earth was
aptly disposed to give rise to them.
Vix ita limitibus discrtverat omnia

certis,
Cum-quce pressa diu massa latuere

sub ipsa
Sidera cceperunt toto effervescere

ccelo :
Neu regio foret ulla suis animalibus

orba,
Astra tenent cceleste solum, formes-

que deorum,
Cesserunt nitidis habitandte piscibus

Terra f eras cepit, volucres agitabilis

aer :
Natus homo est, sive hunc divino

semine fecit
llle opifex rerum, .mundi melioris

origo ;
Sive recens tellus scductaque nuper

ab alto
SEthere cognati retinebat sent in a

cceli.

Ovid. Metamorph.

376 THE CREATION AND

from the earth, fertilized by the sun, and, falling down in a
mist, spread abroad over the face of the ground u . But Moses,
contrary to all the imaginations of this philosophy, affirms,
that by the word of God only all things were made; that
there was not a plant which God did not create before it
was in the earth ; nor an herb, which he had not made
before it grew; and that God had made them all, before
either rain or dew had watered the earth, or the earth had
had any tillage from the hand of man ; for that all the pro-
duce of the world had its beginning before there was any
man to till the ground : but that, other things being thus set
in order, God last of all made man. He had, as I have
observed, before told us, that God made man ; and that he
made two persons, the male and the female x : he now pro-
ceeds more distinctly to relate, of what materials God made
them both ; when and how they were created, where he
placed them, and what command and directions he gave
them, as soon as he gave them being.

And, i. God made the man of the dust of the ground,
breathed into him the breath of life, and caused him to become
a living soulv. 2. He put him into the garden which he had
planted, to dress it, and keep it; and, having therein caused to
grow every tree either pleasant to the sight, or good for food /
the tree of life also, and the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil z ; the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every
tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die 3 -. 3. Having
given the man this injunction, the Lord God said. It is not
good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet
for him b . But, 4. before God proceeded to make this meet
help for man, the beasts of the field being before formed ,
and every fowl of the air, God brought Adam to a trial how

u Thus perhaps they thought who z Ver. 9.

would have sung with Pindar, "Apiffrou a Ver. 16, 17.

/uer v8a>p- Olymp. Ode i. or thought b Ver.iS.

with Thales, Aquam esse initium c We render the place, God formed ;

rerum. Cicero Lib. de Nat. Deor. i. c. but, as I have before observed, the Sy-

10. riac version is rightly translated, God

* Gen. i. 27, had formed; for the creatures were

y Gen. ii, 7, made before man.

FALL OF MAN. 377

he might name them d : and, after this, 5. God caused a deep
sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his
ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which
the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and
brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone
of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman;
because she was taken out of the man e . These are the parti-
culars relating to the creation of mankind, which Moses
distinctly mentions in this second chapter : and if we would
place them in order as they were done, together with what
is hinted in the first chapter, we might add them between
the 27 th and 28th verses of the first chapter. God created
man in his own image; in the image of God created he him;
and the male and the female he created both ofthem f . The male
he formed of the dust of the grounds; placed him in the gar-
den, commanded him his duty there* 1 ; declared that he did
not intend him to be alone 1 ; called him to try to name the
creatures of the world k ; then caused him to fall into a deep
sleep, and out of the man made the woman to take her
beginning 1 . And now both the male and the female being
created, God gave them both the general blessing, and said
unto them all that Moses farther adds in the 28th, 29th,
and 3oth verses of the first chapter : in all which the two
chapters entirely agree, and the second is no more than a
supplement to the former : for I think it needless to remark,
that there is no manner of contradiction between the first
chapter's giving them leave to eat of every tree upon the face
of all the earth, when the second shews plainly, that of one
tree in the garden they were not to eat n ; it is only to be
observed, that the forbidden tree was one tree only, and
that growing in the garden; there was no forbidden tree
out of the garden all over the world ; the restraint, as to one
tree, was enjoined to be observed by them within theii
garden, but wherever they went out of their garden into th<
earth to replenish and subdue it, all was common ; they hac

d Gen. ii. 19, 20. i Ver. 18.

e Ver. 21 23. k Ver. 19, 20.

f Ch. i. 27. 1 Ver. 21, 22.

: Ch. ii. 7. m Ch. i. 29.

h Ver. ii 17. n Ch. ii. 17.

378

THE CREATION AND

no care to inquire, whether a like tree with that prohibited
in the garden grew any where else in the world; for all
that grew without the garden, every tree, and every herb
upon the face of the earth, was indiscriminately given them
for meat.

CHAP. II.

Some Considerations of some of the Particulars related by
Moses to belong to Adani's First Day.

NO sooner was Adam created, than, Moses tells us, he
heard the voice of God ; and that, I think, upon twcf^dif-
ferent points: first, he was audibly commanded, that he
should not eat of the forbidden tree?; secondly, he was told,
that he should not live alone, for that God would make for
him an help, that should be his likeness^. Without doubt
he sufficiently understood what was thus spoken to him y
otherwise the voice of God had spoken to him in vain. But
it will be here queried, How should Adam, having never
before heard words, instantly know the meaning of what the
voice of God thus spake to him I May we not fully answer
this question by another ? How did the Apostles, and such of
the early disciples of Christ as God so enabled 1 ", instantly
know words, viz. the meaning of words, in tongues or lan-
guages never before heard or understood by them ? The

Gen. ii. 16. the versions intimate the meaning of

P Ibid. this passage to be, that God would

Q Ver. 1 8. I apprehend the word, make for Adam an help like himself:

which our version renders an help meet adjutorium simile sibi, says the vulgar

for him, might be translated, an help, Latin ; $o-f\Qbv ar' avr'bv, says the Sep-

that shall be his likeness. The He- tuagint. The Syriac is, adjulorem simi-

brew words are, TmD "H2, nezer ce- lem ipsi. Onkelos, adjutorium quasi

negeddo: the interlinear Latin renders eum. And why may we not, instead of

them, auailium quasi coram eo, an help taking the word neged to be a preposi-

as it were before him, i. e. in his sight tion, and to signify coram, before, or in

or presence, to stand ready to receive the presence of, suppose it to be a noun

his instructions, to aid and execute substantive from the verb nayad, indi-

them. But I do not find the word cavit, and translate cenegeddo, quasi in-

neged ever thus used : to stand before, dicium ejus ; I would say in English,

or in the presence of one, ready for his an indicating, or, as it were, a speaking

aid or service, is, I think, always other- likeness of him?
wise expressed in Scripture : see Deut. r i Corinth, xii 10 30.
x. 8. i Sam. xvi. 22. &c. Some of

FALL OF MAN. 379

spirit of God in both cases raised in the mind the ideas in-
tended, as far as God was pleased to have them perceived,
which the words spoken would have raised, had a know-
ledge of such words in a natural way been attained. God,
who planted the ear, hath given us to hear ; has so made us,
that whatever sound strikes that organ, shall move the mind
of him who hears it. But in themselves words are but mere
sounds ; when they strike the ear, the understanding in-
stantly and naturally judges whether they are soft or loud,
harsh or agreeable; i. e. how the ear is affected by them.
But to give words a meaning; to make them carry, not
only the voice of the speaker to the hearer's ear, but the
intention of the speaker's mind to the hearer's heart; this
comes not naturally from mere hearing, but from having
learned what intention is to be given to such words as are
spoken to us. Should a man hear it said to him, Bring the
bread; it is evident that if the words had never before been
heard by him, they would be to him sounds of no determi-
nate meaning: but let the word bread be repeated to him,
and the loaf shewed him, until he perceives that whenever
he hears the word bread the loaf is intended by it ; let him
farther, upon hearing the word bring, see the action in-
tended by this word done until he apprehends it ; and from
that time the words, whenever he hears them, will speak
their design to him. But should we now say, that therefore
some process of this sort must have been necessary for our
first parents' understanding what God in the beginning of
their being was pleased to cause in words to be heard by
them, we err most inconsiderately, neither attending to the
Scriptures nor to the power of God. The Scriptures shew
us, in the instance of the Apostles and early disciples above
mentioned, that God has in fact, long since the days of
Adam, made men instantly understand words never before
heard or learned by them; and he can undoubtedly, from
any sound heard, teach the heart of man what knowledge
he pleases, instantly causing, from any words spoken, such
sentiments to arise in the mind as he thinks fit to cause by
them : a matter, I apprehend, so plain, that it cannot want
in the general to be argued ; though it may not be improper,

380 THE CREATION AND

before I leave this topic, to consider a little farther what
extent or compass of ideas we may reasonably suppose our
first parents had of the things spoken to them from the
words of God in this their first day heard by them.

An ingenious writer has queried upon this subject : How
could Eve, upon hearing that death was threatened to the
eating of the forbidden tree, have any notion of what could
be meant by dying 8 , having neither seen nor felt any thing
like it? Our author seems to opine, that our first parents
could have no ideas of death at all, if they had not such sen-
timents as time and experience enabled them to form, and
gradually to have more and more enlarged of it : whereas
nothing can be more obvious, than that if upon hearing
what God threatened, namely, that they should die, God
caused them to apprehend that they should cease to be,
though the manner how might in nowise be conceived
by them ; a general notion of this sort might have been
sufficient for them. The first idea of dying was undoubt-
edly not the image which they afterwards came to have of it,
when they slew their first sacrifice ; and their idea of death
became afterwards farther augmented with new terrors.
The murder of their son Abel by Cain shewed them more
plainly how it would affect them in their own persons ; and
many incidents, very probably, occasioned them additional
observations and reflections concerning it; although as we
cannot, so neither could they have their idea of death full
and complete, until they had gone through their own disso-
lutions. But as in this one instance, so in all others, the sen-
timents which God was pleased to raise in the minds of our
first parents of the things he spake to them, were no more
than as it were their first and unimproved notions of those
things ; God did not cause them to think of them in that ex-
tent and variety of conception, which they came afterwards
to have about them, as their thoughts enlarged by a farther
acquaintance with the things spoken of, and with other

s Quo die comedetis moriemini imaginem, somnum, vel noctem, ocu-

Mori ! Quid hoc rei est inquit ignara Us vel animo adhuc senserat. Burnet,

virgo, quae nihil unquam mortuum vi- Arcli&ol. p. 291.
derat, ne florem quidem, neque mortis

FALL OF MAN. 381

things, from which they distinguished, or with which they
compared them. In and from the words which God was
pleased to speak to them, he gave them some plain and ob-
vious sentiments, which were the first beginnings of the
thoughts of their lives; conceptions which grew gradually,
and produced others more enlarged and diversified, as they
grew more and more acquainted with themselves and the
things of the world.

It may here be considered, whether God was pleased to
give Adam and Eve to understand all the words of some one
language, so that whatever was said to them in that particu-
lar tongue was immediately conceived and understood by
them. It has been by many supposed, that God endowed
them with both the speaking and understanding some innate
language ; but I confess myself not to see sufficient reasons
for this sentiment, as I have suggested in another place 1 .
The author of Ecclesiasticus does indeed tell us of our first
parents, that they received the use of the five operations of the
Lord, and in the sixth place he imparted them understanding,
and in the seventh speech, an interpreter of the cogitations there-
of "; but we shall hastily go beyond the true sentiment of
this considerate writer, if we conclude from it, that God in-
stantly gave Adam every word he was to introduce into his
language, or gave him instantly to understand every word of
that language in which God spake, by whomsoever any
word of it might have been spoken to him. The author of
Ecclesiasticus does indeed pronounce the speech of man to
be the gift of God; but in like manner he represents the
perception of man by his five senses, and the judgment of
man by his understanding, to be so too x ; not meaning that,
in giving man speech, God actually gave him every word he
was to utter, any more than that, in giving him the^e ope-
rations of his senses, or in giving him understanding, God
planted innate in him every idea his senses were to raise in
him ; or actually formed upon his mind every sentiment that
was to be his judgment and understanding of the things
that were perceived by him. Kather, in all these cases,

t See Connect, vol. i. book ii. u Ecclesiasticus xvii. 5. * ibid.

382 THE CREATION AND

God gave a capacity or abilities only : in the one, he made
man capable of sensations of the things without him ; in the
other, able to form a judgment of the things perceived by
him, and, in language capable of uttering sounds, and of
judging, from what he had heard from the voice of God,
how he might make his own sounds significant to himself,
and in time to others, to intend what he might fix and de-
sign by each sound to point out and denominate. In this
manner Adam and Eve might form for themselves all the
words of their language, over and besides those few which
had actually been spoken to them by the voice of God :
their immediately understanding these was unquestionably
from him who spake to themy; but because they were in-
stantly enabled, by the power of God, who could affect their
minds as he pleased, to understand each word that proceeded
from the mouth of God, (for otherwise they could not have
been instructed by God's speaking to them,) that therefore
they should as readily understand all the words of some one
whole tongue : herein there is no consequence.

Some writers do indeed set forth Adam abounding in a
great fluency of speech, pouring forth the fulness of his
heart in most eloquent soliloquies, as soon as he perceived he
was in being 2 ; but a considerate inquirer will think this
very unnatural. Adam, though created a man, not in the
imbecility of infancy and childhood, cannot be supposed to
have had a mind stored with ideas (and without these what
could be his thoughts?) before he attained them by sensa-
tions from without, or reflections upon his perceptions
within : and shall we think him to have had words upon his
tongue sooner or faster than he acquired sentiments ? Moses
introduces Adam into the world in a manner far more na-
tural : whatever Adam heard and understood from the voice
of God, Moses does not hint him to have attempted to speak
a word, until God called him to try to name the creatures a;
so that here we find the first attempt Adam made to speak.
And we see the manner and the process of it ; God, we are
told, brought the beasts of the field and the fowls of the

y Vide quae sup. viii. ver. 273.

z See Milton's Paradise Lost, book a Gen. ii. See to ver. 19,

FALL OF MAN. 38S

air b unto Adam, to see what he would call them: and what-
soever Adam called every living creature, that was the name
thereof . After Adam had been called to this trial, we find
him able to name the woman 11 . But before this trial we
read nothing that can cause us to think he attempted to
speak at all ; but rather, an attention to what was said to
him by the voice of God entirely engrossed him. God
brought to Adam the creatures, to see what he would call
them; i. e. to put Adam upon considering how to name them.
But how superfluous a thing would this have been, if Adam
had had an innate word for every creature that was to be
named by him ? Whenever he saw a thing, the innate name
for it would have readily offered itself without trial; he
must have had that name for it, and he could have had no
other: but the text plainly supposes Adam, in naming the
creatures, to have been more at liberty ; whatsoever Adam
named every living creature, that was the name thereof. He
might have called them by other names than he did, he
might have fixed this or that sound, just as he inclined to
call this or that creature, and therefore had no innate names
for any ; but, having determined with himself what sound to
use for the name of one, and what for another, God Al-
mighty herein not interposing, he was left to himself, and so
fixed what he determined for the name of it. But,

I cannot but confess, that an incident which follows may
require our examination before we leave the point before us.
If we consider how Eve was affected when the serpent spake
to her 6 , we see no reason to think she had any difficulty in
understanding any part of what was said to her ; she as
readily took the meaning of what the serpent expressed to
her, as either she or Adam had before apprehended what
had been spoken to them by the voice of God : God doth
know, said the serpent, that in the day that ye eat thereof, then
your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knoiving good
and evil*. God had said nothing to them concerning their

h The fact here related will be more d Ver. 23.

distinctly considered chap. Hi. e Ch. iii.

c Gen. ii. 19. f Ver. 5.

384 THE CREATION AND

eyes being opened, nor of their being as gods; and therefore,
if they had no farther knowledge of the meaning of words,
than of those only which the voice of God had spoken to
them, here seem to have been sounds never before heard by
them, and how could these be so readily received and appre-
hended? We can in nowise suppose the serpent to have
had God's power to make his words instantly as intelligible
to Eve as he pleased.

And it will increase the difficulty, if we may consider the
words here spoken to carry not a plain, but a metaphorical
meaning : their eyes were to be opened^ i. e. say some, their
understandings were to be enlarged; open ihou mine eyes, said
the Psalmist, and I shall see wondrous things from thy law * .
The Psalmist here prays for what he elsewhere expresses in
words without the figure, that God, through his command-
ments, would make him wiser / would give him more under-
standing than he should have had without them h : and it
may seem that, according to Moses, the event of their eyes
being opened was, they knew they were naked 1 ; they had a
different knowledge of themselves, other than what they
had before ; so that we may perhaps think, that Moses here
used the eye of the body metaphorically for the sense of the
understanding, intending by the opening of the one the in-
crease of the judgment of the other. And if this was the
meaning of the words of the serpent to Eve, and if Eve thus
understood them, she cannot be conceived to have been at
this time a mere novice in language, just beginning to form
first notions of a few original and plain words; rather we
must think her an adept in the tongue the serpent spake in,
to have a ready conception of all the elegancy of its diction,
to give its metaphors and figurative expression their true
meaning, to receive and feel the full and real import of
them. But to all this I answer :

i. There was no metaphor intended by Moses in the words
in which he has expressed what the serpent said to Eve ; the
diction of the Psalmist is indeed figurative, Open thou mine

e Psalm cxix. 18. h Ver. 98, 99. * Gen. iii. 7.

FALL OF MAN. 385

eyes, and I shall see wondrous things from thy law* ; but the
word used for open is not the same with that of Moses :
Gal nainai, says the Psalmist 1 . The word here used is a
termination of the verb galah; but Moses expresses the ser-
pent's words to Eve, Your eyes shall be opened, niphkechu
neineicem m : Moses's word for shall be opened is a termina-
tion of the verb pakacli. The Hebrew language has both
these verbs, and we render both by the word open: but the
one only, namely, galah, speaks in the metaphorical sense ;
means, by opening the eye, instructing the understanding,
either by our forming a better judgment of things, or when
God by vision, or in any other manner, was pleased to give
an extraordinary revelation . Pakach nain signifies no more
than to see, what is the object of the natural eye : and to
this meaning it is confined so strictly, that although pakach
nain is sometimes said of God, when God is spoken of, after
the manner of men, yet it is used only where God is said to
look upon such outward actions as can come under the ob-
servation of the eye p : wherever God is said to regard what
can be matter of the attention of the mind only, the ex-
pression pakach nain is, I think, not used.

Pakach nain therefore carries the intention no farther
than to the outward sight ; signifies no more than to open
the eye of the body : I might say, it has such a propriety to
express this, and this only, that asfacere in Latin may be put,
as it were, idiomatically for to sacrifice,
Cum faciam vitulci Virg.

so a participle of the verb pakach, without nain, the word
for eye, after it, may be used in the Hebrew language for one
who has his eye-sight, in opposition to the being blinds ; so
that we use Hebrew words, not in their Hebrew or true
meaning, if we take Moses, by the words he has used, to
intend the serpent to have herein said any thing referring
farther than to their natural eye. r But,

k Psalm cxix. ubi sup. P See 2 Kings xix. 16. Isa. xxxvii.

l >3'2?-'n. 17. Dan. ix. 18, &c.

mnvrr inpD:, Gen. iii. 5. Q Exodus iv. ir. xxiii. 8.

n See Numb. xxiv. 4. r It may perhaps be here queried,

Gen. xxi. 9. 2 Kings iv. 35. vi. whether the words in this place used

17, 20. Prov. xx. 13. by Moses were the very words spoken

386 THE CREATION AND

2. Let us observe, that in what the serpent said to Eve,
he was for the greater part confined to use the very words,
and none other, than what both Eve and Adam had heard
and understood from the voice of God ; and therefore all
these she readily understood as she had before heard and un-
derstood them. Accordingly, there could be nothing in the
serpent's first address to Eve, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall
not eat of every tree of the garden s ? but what she must have
readily understood from God's having said, Of every tree of the
garden ye may freely eat*: only we may remark, that though
Moses has in divers places historically called God Elohim u ,
yet that God not having as yet so named himself to her and
Adam, the word Elohim, God, might not have been heard
by Eve before the serpent spake it to her. But if this was
in fact true, as there was no other person but one that had
spoken before this to her or Adam, there could be no con-
fusion in her hearing the serpent call him Elohim, God ;
she must readily understand who by that name was intended
by him. To go on : The serpent's next words, Ye shall not
surely die*, must instantly, when spoken, be sufficiently un-
derstood, from her having understood what God had said
before, ye shall surely die? ; as any one that understands a
proposition affirmed, must understand the denial of that same
proposition. The serpent proceeded ; For God doth know
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened;
and ye shall be as gods, (ce Elohim, as God) knowing good and
evil. Here I would observe, that in the day that ye eat
thereof had been before said to them from the mouth of
God z , and that God had called the tree the tree of the know-
ledge of good and evil*; and therefore from what God had in

by the serpent ? And indeed I should that he expressed in the language of

apprehend they were not j as I do not his own times, with a strict propriety,

conceive that Moses's Hebrew was the what the serpent had spoken in words

first original unimproved language of of the same meaning, though probably

the world. See Connect, vol. i. b. ii. of a more antique form, construction,

But as we have all reason, whether and pronunciation,
we conceive Moses to have wrote by Gen. iii. i.

an immediate inspiration; or whether, Ch. ii. 16.

under a divine direction, he wrote from Ch. i. and ii.

ancient memoirs of his forefathers, Ch. iii. 4.

which perhaps were recorded in an Ch. ii. 17.

older, and perhaps then obsolete die- Ibid,

tion ; we may and ought to allow, Ibid.

FALL OF MAN. 387

these words said to them, all the sentiment she had of know-
ing, and of knowing good and evil, may be conceived to
arise upon the serpent's in these like terms speaking to her.
The serpent told her they should be as gods : we render it
in the plural number, but not rightly ; for it is not reason-
able to imagine the serpent intimated to her herein, that
there were spiritual beings, many in number, in the invisible
world ; this as yet did not enter her imagination : she and
Adam had heard but one that spake to them ; the serpent
had told Eve that this person was Elohim* ; he here tells
her, that if they eat of the tree, they should increase in
knowledge of good and evil, be ce Elohim, like him: and
herein, as far as they had any notions of what knowledge
was, nothing unintelligible was proposed to her.

There remains still to be considered, what she expected
from what seemed promised in the words, your eyes shall be
opened: but I may fully answer this in three or four obser-
vations, i. I have already said that these words have no
reference to the improvement of the knowledge of the
mind : what the tempter offered concerning that came after-
wards under the words Ye shall be as God, knowing good and
evil. The words concerning their eyes being opened are
such, that, according to the Hebrew idiom, they speak no
more than some enlargement of their outward sight. 2. I
would remark, that it cannot be necessary to say that Eve
had an adequate and full notion of the true meaning of these
words. The writers that would puzzle and perplex this
matter, would contend, that the fall happened immediately
after the creation ; but we can in nowise find any one reason
for such an assertion. Rather, I apprehend, we shall see
what may induce us to think that several days intervened
between the sabbath after the day of Adam and Eve's
creation, and the day on which the serpent tempted Eve.

b Gen. iii. i. were, I cannot say, nor by whom

c See hereafter. Syncellus cites the made; their authority can avail only

Aeirra Tfvcffeus to say, that Adam was to hint, that there have been ancient

guilty of the transgression in his seventh writers who did not think the fall to

year, and expelled Paradise in his have been so instantaneous as others

eighth. Syncelli Chronogr. p. 8. What have since imagined,
the minutes of Genesis here cited

VOL. II. C C

388 THE CREATION AND

On the night of each of these days, Adam and Eve, in the
course of nature, had known what sleep was, and how it dif-
fered from the being awake, and therefrom what it was to
shut the eye, and what it was to open it; and probably had
made themselves, before the serpent spake to Eve, a name
for the one and a name for the other ; and therefore, though
the serpent here used words which they had not heard from
the mouth of God, yet he might not herein use words
which they had not agreed to make, and had daily spoken
to and heard from themselves, and consequently were words
that were not without meaning. I do not say that Adam
or Eve, at hearing these words, conceived exactly the event
which afterwards came to pass ; for it is obvious to observe,
that we may be said to know the general meaning of words,
sufficiently to give us expectations from them, and yet not
be able determinately to see their full extent and import.
Every one that has a common understanding of the Greek
tongue would, upon reading the Philosopher, KaQap^ol ^/o^s
Aoyt/ojs etVt at juaflij/mariKcu 67rto-rr;juat d , apprehend that these stu-
dies may greatly improve us ; as the English reader may, from
no better translation of the words than, the mathematics are
purgations of the reasonable mind: but the particular improve-
ment to be had from them would not hence be known to
any, who had not experienced the habit that may be ac-
quired from these studies of pursuing .long trains of ideas
variously intermingled, so as to see through all the steps that
truly lead to the most distant conclusions. Whether Eve,
well knowing, from many days 1 experience, wherein the
opening the eye differed from the shutting it, thought that
after eating the fruit she should never more slumber nor
sleep; or whether she conceived such an addition to their
sight, as that they might thenceforth be able to see Him
whom hitherto they had heard only without his being visi-
ble to them 6 , I cannot say : but may conceive her to have
formed to herself great expectations, without reaching the
full meaning of the words, much less apprehending what

d Hierocles in aurea Carmina Py- to have been seen before the days of
thag. Abraham. See Connect, book ix. p.

e No divine appearance is recorded 525.

FALL OF MAN. 389

became in reality the event of them. Upon the whole :
when God was pleased to speak to Adam and Eve, they
having not before heard words, it is not to be conceived
that they could have understood what the voice of God
spake, unless God had caused them to understand the words
spoken. But allowing that God enabled them to perceive
what he thought fit to say to them, and duly attending to
what Moses relates farther, we shall see no reason to think
that any thing more was said to them, or that they hurried
into the world, or the things of the world broke in upon
them faster, or in a greater variety, than they could form
themselves words to talk of, and to know distinctly, as far as
their knowledge did, or it was necessary it should then
reach, the things they had to hear or to speak, to be con-
cerned in, or affected with in their lives : and therefore no
more being necessary for them, than that God should cause
them so to understand what he thought fit to speak to them,
we justly conclude, that, as to making other words, and
settling the meaning and intention of them, he left our first
parents to do what he had given them full powers and op-
portunity to do, in a natural way for themselves, unto which
God was pleased to lead Adam, as far as he herein wanted
guidance and direction, in the manner which shall be set
forth in the ensuing chapter.

CHAP. III.

A Consideration of the particular Manner in which God was
pleased to lead Adam to name the living Creatures of the
World.

THE fact, which I am in this chapter to inquire into, is
thus related to us by Moses : Out of the ground the Lord God
formed every beast of the field r , and every fowl of the air ; and
brought them unto Adam, to see what he would call them : and
whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the
name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the

c c 2

390 THE CREATION AND

fowl of the air, and to every least of the field*. To form a
right judgment of what is here said to be done, we must not
too hastily set down with our English version of Moses's
words, but inquire more strictly into the text of Moses, and
examine how he indeed relates this matter.

The words of Moses are :

Vejitzer Jehovah Elohim min ha Adamah col chajath hassedah,

veceth Col Noph hashemaim, vejabea eel ha Adam

lireoth mahjikrah lo : Ve colasherjikra lo ha Adam nepesh chajah

hua Shemo: vejikra ha Adam Shemoth lecol habeshema

ve lenoph has Shemaim ve lecol chajath hassedahz.

The passage verbally translated is as follows : And the Lord
God formed out of the ground every least ofthefield^ and every
fowl of the heavens; and he brought unto Adam to see what he
would call IT. And whatsoever Adam called IT, THE LIV-
ING CREATURE, that was the name of IT. And Adam gave
names to every living creature, and to the fowls of the heavens,
and to every beast of the field.

It is observable of the passage, that the first period of it,
namely, And the Lord God formed out of the ground every
least of the field, and every fowl of the heavens, was not in-
tended to hint to us that God now, at this juncture, created
any living creatures anew: rather the words should have
been rendered agreeably to what is the translation of the
Syriac version h , the Lord God had formed , for they are
not a relation that God now made them, but a recognition of

f Gen. ii. 19, 20.

S The Hebrew words are, and may be written and interlined as follows

ryn noin p DM^N mrr ISM

agri animal omne humo ex Deus Dominus et formavit

^ ni

Adamum ad et adduxit coelorum volatile omne ac etiam

n D3 _

ens animal ipse Adam illi nomen dedit quod et omne daret illi nomen quid ad videndum
nnnan ^ mnxo msn *np>u inrc *orr
bestiae omni nomina ipse Adam et edixit nomen ejus hoc
mm ivn bubi o-'oran ^ly^i
agri animali et omni coelorum et volatili

h Compegerat autem Dominm Deus de humo omnem bestiam. Vide Walt. Poly-
glott. Syr. Vers. in loo.

FALL OF MAN. 391

what had been before related, that God had been the creator
both of the birds and cattle'; none of which were now
made at this time : for the one were created a day sooner
than Adam k , the other on the same day, but earlier and
before him 1 .

In like manner the words which begin the 2oth verse,
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air,
and to every beast of the field, do not mean that Adam now,
at this one time, gave names to all living creatures ; but are
rather a remark, that the names of the creatures were given
by Adam, and by no other : he himself, [ha Adam] says the
text, named them ; not now, all at once ; that undoubtedly
would have been too much for him : but he named them
gradually, some at one time, and some at another, in the pro-
cess of his life, as incidents happened to give occasion for
his so doing.

That the fact really was not that Adam now named all
the creatures, is evident from the very express words of
Moses, which relate the particular we are examining : the
words of Moses are, And the Lord God brought unto Adam to
see what he would call iT m ; and whatsoever Adam called IT,
THE LIVING CREATURE", that was the name of IT. The
question here to be asked is, What did God bring unto the
man ? Our English version, following other translations, says
THEM ; i. e. every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air,
for these are the words which THEM must refer to : but we
are to observe, that the word THEM is not in the Hebrew
text; according to Moses, the name given by Adam was
[17] lo, i. e. to IT : the pronoun is of the singular number,
not plural : and the next sentence expresses this more fully ;
the words being not as we render the text, And whatsoever
Adam called every living creature. There is no word in the
text for every: the Hebrew words say, Whatsoever Adam

i See Gen. i. text is rendered more strictly to the

k Ver. 20. Hebrew words in the Latin translation

1 Ver. 21. of it in our Polyglot Bible thus; Ad-

m Lireoth mahfikra lo. Gen. ii. 19. duxitque ad Adam, ut videret, quomodo

n Ve col asher jikra lo ha Adam ne- vocaret Mud; et omne quod vocaretillud

pesh chajath huu Shemo. Ibid. Adam animce vivenlis hoc est nomen

Hua Shemo. Ibid. The Samaritan ejus.

THE CREATION AND

called IT, the living creature, that was the name of, not THEM,
but, the text says, that was the name of IT.

Thus the fact before us appears to be, that God brought
unto Adam, not all the living creatures ; for the text says
no such thing: God indeed made all the creatures?, and
Moses here recognizes this truth : but God brought unto
Adam some one creature only ; a nepesh chajah in the sin-
gular numbers, to see what he would call IT. Adam here-
upon gave IT a name : and what he thus called IT, that
was the name of IT. God was pleased herein to bring
Adam to a trial, to shew him how he might use sounds of
his own to be the names of things : God called him to give
a name to one creature, and hereby put him upon seeing
how words might be made for this purpose : Adam under-
stood the instruction, and practised according to it. For so
Moses tells us : Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl
of the air, ahd to every beast of the field r . The names of
the creatures were not given by any express words from the
voice of God, but were of Adam's own making, as he pro-
ceeded to use sounds of his own to be the names of things,
as himself designed the names of them. God, as I said,
brought Adam to name one creature : Adam had the sense
and understanding to see hereby how he might make words,
and make use of them : and accordingly in the progress of
his life, as the creatures of the world came under his obser-
vation, he used this ability, and gave names to them all.

P Gen. i. made the final words of the several

1 See the text of Gen. ii. 19. I lines, as T have before transcribed

should have some difficulty to say them, nepesh chajah might not be so

why nepesh chajah is not lenepesh cha- situated at the end of a line, as that a

jah, in the dative case, as" I think ne- copyist might mistake, and put it to the

pesh standing after and referred to lo end of the third line, when it really

the construction should require : but I should be at the end of the second,

would offer to the consideration of the If this may be supposed, the words of

learned, whether if in the ancient ma- Moses are exceeding clear, being ex-

nuscript this text was wrote in lines actly as follows :
ending with the words which I have

And the Lord God had formed of the ground every beast of the field,
and every fowl of the heavens, and brought unto Adam a living creature
to see what name he would give to it. And whatsoever name Adam gave it,
that was the name of it, &c.

* Gen. ii. 20.

FALL OF MAN. 393

And now if this was the fact, it must, I think, be allowed
me, that Adam had, as I have already observed, no formed,
fixed, and innate language : for had he had such language,
it must have been a most superfluous thing to bring him to
this trial, to set any creature before him to see what he
would call it. An innate language whenever and wherever
he had seen any creature or thing in the world, would have
instantly given him its innate name ; no trial could have
been wanted to lead him to it ; this name would, as it were,
have i offered itself, and I cannot see how he should have
thought of any other. But Moses seems in nowise to re-
present Adam under these limitations ; a creature was
brought to him to see what he would call it: there is not the
least hint that he was so much as directed what to call it;
for [ha Adam] Adam himself named all the creatures 8 ; we
have no reason to think that God dictated the name of any :
and the expressions of Moses hint Adam to have had all
possible liberty to name them as his own imagination should
lead him : nothing seems to have been herein fixed or de-
termined for him, but he called every thing by what name
he pleased, and whatsoever name he fixed and determined
for any creature, that was the name thereof.

Our Bibles close the 2Oth verse of the second chapter of
Genesis with these words : But for Adam there was not found
an help meet for him. The adding these words to the end of
this 2Oth verse may seem to represent, that in the transaction
ending with this observation, there undoubtedly had been a
survey taken of all the creatures of the world, to have it seen
that none of them were fit to be Adam's associate, and con-
sequently that all the creatures had been convened for Adam
to name them. I believe our translators had this sentiment,
and the dividers of the Bible into verses were probably of
this opinion. It is a thought that may easily take the un-
wary, though I am surprised that the difficulty of conceiving
how it could be, has not occasioned it to be more strictly
examined. However, as I have shewn Moses's text to say
no such thing, I may as clearly evince, that in the words of

8 Gen. ii. 20. ut sup.

394 THE CREATION AND

Moses, which we improperly add to the 2oth verse, there
was really intended no such insinuation. For,

i. But for Adam there was not found an help meet for him:
these words ought not to have been made a part of the 2oth
verse ; they are the beginning of the relation of a new trans-
action, and, not having any reference to any thing before-
going, they should have begun a new period, absolutely in-
dependent of and detached from the former. Agreeably
hereto we may observe, 2. that the particle 1 [ve,~] which
we here translate BUT, ought to be in this place rendered
AND: it is often so rendered in the first and this second
chapter of Genesis : it is not here a discretive particle, dis-
joining and distinguishing two parts of one period; but
it is the particle often used by Moses, when, having finished
his narration of one fact, he passes on from that to quite
another 1 . 3. If we will suppose the words above cited
to belong to the 2Oth verse, we shall have difficulties to
make out their grammatical construction; difficulties to as-
certain a nominative case to the verb found; for the word
which we translate was found is not passive, as we render it :
the words are N!ft2"N7, loa matza, he did not find, in the
active voice; and the nominative case to this verb follows
after the next verb in the next verse, and is Jehovah Elohim,
the Lord GW U . This is a construction very clear and frequent
in many languages, and in the Hebrew tongue amongst
others ; and our translators ought to have been carefully at-
tentive to it. 4. I would farther observe, that the Hebrew
verb matza does not always signify to find a thing, after
having looked for it ; but when used with a noun, to which ^
is prefixed, it makes an idiom of the Hebrew tongue, to
which we have something similar in a particular use of our
word, find in English. Buxtorf remarks x , that the verb mat-
za, with a dative case by the prefix le, signifies to suffice; I

t Gen. i. 6, 9, 14, 20, &c. ii. 7, 15, 18, 20, 21.
u The words are, Gen. ii. 20.

^D'l 11333 112 N2CTN 1 ? DlN^l

at cadere fecit judicium ejus adjutoriura non invenerat et homini
oiNn by na~nn n'nbN mm
Adamum in soporem Deus Jehovah

x Buxtorf in voce tf 2E.

FALL OF MAN. 395

should rather say, sufficiently to supply: thus Numbers xi. 22.
Shall the flocks and the herds be slain for them ? (DPr? N2D1, ve
matza lehem) and will it suffice them? i. e. will it sufficiently
supply them? Thus again, Judges xxi. 14. And Benjamin
came again at that time; and they gave them wives which they
had saved alive of the women of Jabesh-gilead. But the He-
brew words are, p On*? l M3to"W7lj ve loa matzaeu lehem cen,
and yet so they sufficed them not, they did not sufficiently sup-
ply them so. I would, more closely to the Hebrew, trans-
late both these places by our English word find : Shall the
flocks and the nerds be slain for them ? I should say, Will it
find them ? In the passage in the book of Numbers, They
gave them wives, which they had saved alive of the women of
Jabesh-gilead, but (I should render the place) they did not
find them so. The expression, to find a person, is still used in
some parts of England to signify to supply that person with
such things as we undertake to procure for him; and in
this sense I take the word matza to be here used by
Moses : God had promised to find Adam with a person or
helper, that should be his likeness ; Moses, now going to
relate in what manner God made his person, introduces his
narration very properly with observing, that God had not
yety found or supplied Adam with this companion : and
having suggested this observation, he proceeds to relate in
what manner God now supplied him : And the Lord God
had not supplied or found the man with the help meet for him:
but caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, &c. z

CHAP. IV.

Concerning the Formation of Eve, and the further Transactions
of Adam's first Day; together with some Observations upon
the whole.

THE account given by Moses of the formation of Eve is in
words as follow : And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall

y Gen. ii. 20. z Ver. 21.

396 THE CREATION AND

upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed
up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib, which the Lord God had
taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the
man. God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam : the He-
brew word for a deep sleep is HETtf"!, tardemah. It is a word
used in divers places in the Old Testament ; in some it sig-
nifies no more than what we in English call a sound sleep; a
sleep from which we awake, not having dreamed, or been
sensible of any thing that has passed during the time of it.
It is thus used in the book of Proverbs, Slothfulness casteth
into a deep sleep 3 -: and more emphatically in the first book of
Samuel, where David and Abishai went by night into Saul's
camp, and took away the spear and cruse of water from his
bolster, without awakening him, or any of the soldiery that
lay asleep round about him b ; for, says the text, [tardemah
Jehovah,] a deep sleep of or from the Lord was fallen upon
them; hereby meaning, that they were in a most exceeding
sound sleep, so sound an one, that we might, using the He-
brew idiom c , speak as if God himself had been the cause of
it. But although this is the general signification of the
word tardemah, yet it is farther used sometimes to denote
that kind of sleep in which God, in the earlier ages of the
world, was pleased in divers manners to give revelations
unto men : sound asleep, their natural sensations made them

a Prov. xix. 15. . It was the obstinacy of their own

b i Sam. xxvi. 12. hearts that brought them to destruc-

c It is a solemn, but not unusual ex- tion, which obstinacy being so great,

pression in the Hebrew tongue, to say as that we in English would call it a

of a thing beyond measure great, that fatal obstinacy, the Hebrew expression

it is of the Lord ; not always meaning for it was, an obstinacy from the Lord;

hereby, that God himself is the imme- not meaning hereby, that when any

diate cause of it, but signifying it to be man was tempted, he should say he was

such, that naturally no account is easy tempted of God, for God cannot be

to be given of it. So great was the tempted with evil, neither tempteth he

hardness of Pharaoh's heart, that God any man, James i. 13. Their obstina-

is thus said to have hardened it, though cy was their own wilfulness ; great,

Pharaoh really hardened his own heart, and indeed beyond all common ex-

Exod. vii. 13, 22. viii. 15, 19, 32. ix. pression, and therefore said to be of the

7, 34. See Connection, vol. ii. b. ix. Lord: and in this sense I should un-

And thus it is said, that it was of the derstand what is said of the sound sleep

Lord to harden the hearts of the Canaan- of Saul and his army, not taking the

ites, that they should come out against text to mean any more than that it

the Israelites in battle. Not that we are was so deep a sleep, as might be hard

to say that God actually prevented the to say how it could be, that they were

Canaanites from securing themselves not awakened out of it.
from ruin. See Connect, vol. iii. b. xii.

FALL OF MAN. 397

no impressions ; but by internal visions and movements of
their minds, they had strong and lively sentiments raised in
them of what God was thus pleased to shew unto them.
Daniel says of himself, using the verb from which the noun
tardemah is derived, [nirdampti,] I was in a deep sleep on my
face towards the ground ; but he touched me, and set me up-
right& : in a deep sleep of this sort Daniel was made to un-
derstand a vision that appeared to him e . And Job in like
manner in tardemah, a deep sleep of this kind, when a
vision of the night befell him, saw a spirit passing before his
face, an image before his eyes, and heard a voice f . . AbramS
in tardemah, this depth of sleep, had a very signal revelation
made to him ; and accordingly, such was the tardemah, deep
sleep, that on the occasion before us fell on Adam. Whether,
abstracted from all impressions of his outward senses, he saw,
as Balaam speaks, a vision of the Almighty*; as the book
of Job mentions, a spirit, an image before him } , actually per-
forming what was done to him, I cannot determine: but,
as Moses has nowhere said that Adam ever saw any simili-
tude or appearance to represent God k , I should rather think
that God was pleased, by impressions such as the ear usually
conveys to the mind, and which God undoubtedly can cause
to arise in us as lively as he pleases, as well without their
actually coming through the ear, as if they did come
through it, to cause Adam to perceive the same, as if awake
he had heard that voice, in which God had before spoken to
him, commanding a rib, a bone to be taken out of him, and
seen that it was done ; bidding the flesh be closed up instead
thereof \, and it was so; saying, Let the woman be made
hereof, and she was created. Upon Adam's awaking, he
found in fact what in his sleep had been shewed to him :
the woman, such in reality as he had before apprehended
her, was brought to him, i. e. was present before him : and
he now, using the power of naming things, the exercise of

* Daniel viii. 18. i Job ubi sup.

e Ver. 1926. k We read of no divine appearance

f Job iv. 13, 15, 16. to any one before the days of Abra-

g Gen. xv. 1216. ham. See Connect, book ix. p. 525.

h Numbers xxiv. 16. l Gen. ii. 21 23.

398 THE CREATION AND

which was upon his mind, as he had just begun to practise
it, before he fell asleep; having had a clear perception of
what had been transacted, said naturally of this new crea-
ture ; This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesli : she
shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.
But I conceive here Adam ended; for he in nowise added
the words which follow, therefore shall a man leave father
and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be
one flesh"*: for Adam could not yet say what it was to be a
father or a mother, and therefore could draw no conclusion
concerning them. Moses indeed records these words as
now spoken, but he does not say that Adam spake them :
and our Saviour has told us, that not Adam, but God him-
self, said this to them ; it was he which made them, that said,
For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall
cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh .

The last transaction of this first day of Adam's life was,
that, after the woman was created, God blessed them both,
and said unto them what we read in the 28th, 29th and
3<Dth verses of the first chapter of Genesis ; the particulars of
which may be sufficiently considered, if I take a general re-
view of the things concerning Adam said and done in this
day.

One of Dr. Burnet's objections to the history of Moses is,
that it heaps together too many things for the space of time
allotted to themP: and indeed this writer has endeavoured
to run together a multiplicity of incidents, and to crowd
them all into this one day, in order to represent it to have
been a day of great hurry and confusion, rather than such as
the day ought to have been, on a cool and deliberate sense
of which, and a conduct according to it, depended the life
or death; we might say, if there had been no further pur-
pose in the deep counsel of God for us, depended the whole
of man. But if we carefully examine and distinguish what
are the facts which Moses ascribes to this one day, and what

m Gen. ii. 23. acta narrantur ! Quot autem, et

n Ver. 24. quanta congerenda sunt in hunc unum

Matt. xix. 4, 5. diem ! Burnet, Archoeol. p. 294.
P Quantillo tempore haec omnia per-

FALL OF MAN. 399

are not, and in what manner he describes them, we shall see
reason widely to differ from this writer. God breathed into
Adam the breath of life, and caused him to become a living
soulq ; but Moses in nowise describes Adam, as soon as he
began to think, to abound instantly in a variety of concep-
tions concerning his own nature, concerning the Deity, or
of the works of God, and of the fabric of the world r : had
Moses brought forth Adam expatiating in such an un-
bounded wild of sudden and indigested apprehensions, there
would have been reason to consider whether the human
mind would not have hence fallen into great confusions.
But there is a propriety in the manner in which Moses
brings Adam into the world: he does not tell us, that, in
order to take his first sight of things, God set him upon an
hill, to look around him over the creation ; but God put him
into a garden, where a few plain and easy objects surrounded
and confined his first views from taking in a variety, that
would have been too much for him. A bounded shade of
trees was a scene that neither fatigued his eye, nor gave a
multiplicity of conceptions to his mind : in this silent cover
from the many things there were in the world, he hears the
voice of God, and feels himself to know what was said to
him.

And the words now spoken to him were not such as
called him into the midst of things, to load him with a mul-
titude of sentiments, either of God, of himself, or of what
was in the world, or concerning what were to be the moral
and relative duties of his life ; but the voice of God, as yet,
spake to him only of the plain objects then visibly before
him ; called the lofty plants which he saw, the trees of the
garden ; told him that he might eat of all of them except
one ; but commanded him not to eat of that one, for that if
he did eat of it he should surely die 9 . And it is remarkable
of that one tree, that it was so distinguished from all others
by its situation 1 , that it could not but at sight be thereby

1 Gen. ii. 7. Milton, Par. Lost, b. viii.

r We may see a large field of ima- s Gen. ii. 16, 17.

ginations of this kind most beautifully * It does not seem to me deter -

coloured, but in fact, and the reason of mined, that the tree of life stood also

the thing, mere fancy and romance, in in the midst of the garden : Eve seems

400 THE CREATION AND

known in order to be avoided, before he had time to make
observations, to see wherein one tree differed from another.

May we add, that Adam heard the voice of God declare,
that it was not good that he should be alone; but that an
help, which should be his likeness, should be made for him" ?
Take these words to have spoken to him, not all the en-
larged notions of the wants and imperfections of solitary
life x , nor the variety of the comforts of social happiness, the
ideas of which could not begin and increase in him sooner
or farther than a knowledge and experience of life raised
and improved them ; but supposing the words to suggest to
him no more than that another person like him should be
made to be with him, and that it was good for him to have it
so; (a point which, perhaps, if God had not told him, he
would as yet not have thought of;) nothing herein was
proposed to him so complex, as that his first thoughts could
be in any confusion about it.

The next incident may indeed seem an embarrassment, if
we imagine it to have been transacted as it is commonly
conceived: but this, I think, I have already obviated.
There was no assemblage of the living creatures of the world
for Adam to name them, nor could he at any one time
make a survey of them; it would have been a work too
large for him : but observing, that though Adam had heard
the voice of God, yet he had not as yet made any one word
of his own for himself, we may allow, that the fact of his
naming the creatures, as Moses truly states it, shews us very
naturally how the man, having been enabled to understand
the words that God had spoken to him, was introduced to
begin and exercise himself to make further words for the

rather to hint that the forbidden tree Gen. ii. 18. Vide quse sup.
stood single and alone in that situa- x Milton supposes Adam wonder-

tion, Gen. iii. 3. Our gth verse of the fully able to expatiate upon the un-

second chapter might be pointed and happiness of solitude, the benefits of

translated thus : And out of the ground equal society ; to say why God might,

made the Lord God to grow every tree but man could not comfortably be

that is pleasant to the sight, and good for alone. The representation he draws

foody and the tree of life : in the midst of is most delightfully poetical: but we

the garden also the tree of knowledge of can in no wise think considerately,

good and evil. And thus this verse that Adam could as yet have thoughts

would agree exactly with what Eve like these upon the subject. Milton,

said in the next chapter. Paradise Lost, b. viii. 365 435.

FALL OF MAN. 401

occasions of his life. The naming one creature taught him
how he might name another; and the making names for
the creatures gradually apprised him how he had it in his
power to name and to speak of all kinds of things, for him
and Eve to begin and improve a conversible life : for it was
in this easy and natural manner that, to use the words of the
author of the book of Wisdom, it was granted to them to
speak as they would of the things that were given them?.

Before Adam had proceeded far in naming the creatures,
it pleased God to cause him to fall into a deep sleep z ,
wherein no sensations from without gave him any interrup-
tion ; but he had a clear and disimplicated perception of the
manner in which Eve was taken out of him, and therein
learned to name some parts of his own body a rib, a bone,
his flesh, and, from what he had perceived concerning her
origin, to name the woman also according to it. And,

After he had received the person made for him, and given
her a name, reconsidering her extract, He that made them
both said unto them a , the voice of God spake what he in-
tended should be the strict and indissoluble union of man and
wife in their lives. Relations of life were indeed here sug-
gested, of which Adam and Eve as yet could not have any
judgment; for it seems to appear that Adam as yet did not
know that Eve was to be a mother, or himself a father ; it
being observed, that as soon as he knew she was to be the
mother of all living, he gave her a name accordingly, and
thereupon called her name Eve b ; but this was not until after
the fall, and after the sentence of God passed upon them c .
However, it may be apprehended, that what God here said
must strike their minds, charged as yet with but few things,
and be so remembered by them, as that when afterwards
they came to be a father and a mother, and in time had chil-
dren grown up to be husbands and wives, they might con-
sider and instruct them, what in the beginning had been said
unto them, and how, according to God's original designation

y Wisdom vii. 15. b Gen. iii. 20.

z Gen. ii. 21. c Ibid.

a Vide quse sup.

402 THE CREATION AND

and commandment, man and wife were inseparably to live
together in the world.

Before the close of this their first day, God blessed them, and
said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the
earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that
moveth upon the earth d . It does not seem that they had,
I rather think I may affirm, that our first parents as yet had
not looked beyond their garden : they had not seen the com-
pass of the world, nor took account of the numbers of the
creatures that were therein: they had not been on the sea
shores; neither could they know the inhabitants of the
floods, whose paths are in the waters ; so that it would be
unnatural and absurd to think of the words now spoken to
them, that they were any further understood by them, than
to give them a general expectation of seeing and becoming
acquainted with a various and extensive scene of things, far
beyond what was as yet beheld by, or known to them.
Their garden was the inclosure that at present surrounded
them : but they were now informed that there was a whole
world to be opened to them, that they should find innumer-
able living creatures on the land, in the seas, and in the air ;
and that they themselves should be fruitful and multiply,
should replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion
over, and be, as it were, proprietors of all the living crea-
tures that were created: that there was a sustenance pro-
vided for all things living in the fruits of the ground; for
that they were all given without exception or restraint, the
one limitation only observed, of one tree in the garden, of
which Adam and Eve were not to eat e . These were the
intimations now given them ; but they were in nowise in-
structed by them to know the things spoken of, as fully as
day after day more and more led them to understand them :
rather, what God now spake to them had only this general
effect; it so prepared them, that as the world opened to
them, nothing in it was so absolutely unexpected as to sur-

d Gen. i. 28, &c. e Ch. ii. quse sup.

FALL OF MAN. 403

prise and confound them ; for, remembering what had been
said to them, they might, as new things presented them-
selves, gradually proceed to name them and distinguish
them, and daily grow acquainted with them, to consider
how they could use their power over them to make them
useful or agreeable to them.

I should add further; that how much soever of these
things was told them, it appears to have been provided for
them, that they should not hurry too fast to look into and
after the many things in the world; for the day ensuing
was to be a sabbath f , a day of rest, to be set apart to recol-
lect and consider all that had been said and shewed to them ;
that before they proceeded, they might have all the instruction,
which a repeated review of it could give them, distinct upon
their hearts ; and when the sabbath was over, they were
not instantly at liberty to wander at large over the earth, for
their first business was in their garden. God had herein
given them employment ; they were to dress it, and to keep
its: their duty here, if attended to, would so far confine
them, that the world would not break in upon them, nor
they go into the world faster or farther than they might be-
come gradually able to receive and digest the knowledge of
things that would arise from it. In this manner Moses re-
presents God to have given our first parents the beginnings
of their lives; and whoever will duly examine the senti-
ments which he sets before us upon this subject, and com-
pare them with what other writers have fancied and repre-
sented, of all whom we shall find none so likely to capti-
vate us as our Milton h : I say, whoever will compare
Moses with other writers upon this subject, will find that
he deeply entered into the real nature of man ; and will be
brought to say of him above all others,

Quanto rectius hie nil molitur inepte.

Hor.

His account speaks itself to be fact, and not fable; and
however our first thoughts may not go to the bottom of

f Gen. ii. 2. s Ver. 15. b Paradise Lost.

VOL. II. D d

404 THE CREATION AND

what he has written, a careful examination of it will shew
us, that they who have thought it fable have not taken
pains truly to understand it. I have only to observe, before
I close this chapter, that from what has been said we may
reasonably conceive, that our first parents were not hurried
into any scene, of either things or sentiments, larger or
sooner than they could be able to form, as they should want
them, all such words as the incidents of their lives would
call for, over and besides those which God already had, or
did afterwards speak to them.

CHAP. V.

An Inquiry, what we may reasonably think to have been at this
time the actual state of Adam's knowledge.

MOST writers, who have treated of the fall, give us ac-
counts of what they think the primitive state of Adam's and
Eve's knowledge before they committed sin. But their sen-
timents, however they may seem ingenious, are no better
than groundless imaginations. Our English poet represents
Adam, as soon as he was created, not only to see things as
they came before him, but instantly to know their natures,
by God's giving him an immediate apprehension of them;
introducing Adam relating how he named the creatures.
Supposing the hypothesis to have been fact, that God caused
an assemblage of the whole animal world to see what Adam
would name every creature of it, he makes Adam say of
himself,

I nam'd them as they pass'd, and understood
Their natures ; with such knowledge God endu'd
My sudden apprehension 1 .

That God could, if he had pleased, have thus endowed
Adam, can be no question ; but that God did not, is plain :
for nothing can be more evident, than that neither Eve nor

i Milton's Paradise Lost, book viii. 352.

FALL OF MAN. 405

Adam had in fact this knowledge ; they seem both to have
been together when the serpent spake to Eve k , but neither
of them appear to have been surprised at hearing a serpent
speak in man's voice. The observation they hereupon seem to
have made was, that the serpent was more subtle than any beast
of the field\: they had heard no other creature thus speak,
and therefore apprehended the serpent to have higher en-
dowments than other animals. But we have no hint which
represents either of them to have been at all aware that the
serpent was not by nature as conversible as themselves 01 ; a
plain indication, that they had no such knowledge of the
animal world as Milton supposes. Milton variously imagines
Adam to have had this innate sudden apprehension to guide
him aright to judge of all things ; of the nature of God n ;
of the nature of man ; in a word, of every thing knowable
within the reach of the human capacity : and, in truth, this
seems to be the general opinion of writers; they speak of
Adam, that he was created a philosopher, had implanted in
him a natural fund of all science, instantly informing him of
the true natures of things, whensoever any sight of them
came before his eyes, or any occasion was given him to
have. thoughts of them in his mind; that he had innate sen-
timents of all moral duties ; that before the fall, he was ig-
norant of nothing but of sin. But the history of Moses sets

k The supposing Eve to have gone ornamented in all its incidents, as hu-

forth to work, separate from Adam, on man imagination could contrive or

the morning that the temptation befell can conceive. See Milton's Paradise

her, is an ingenious fiction of our Lost, book ix. But I do not see that

poet's, which gave him room to intro- the text of Moses appears to counte-

duce an episode as beautiful and well nance it : Moses says, that Eve,

Dn no? nro'N'rDa jnm 3ni VIDO npm

et edit secum viro etiam et dedit et edit de fructu ejus et cepit

That she took of the fruit and did eat, natural abilities by eating of this fruit,

and gave also to her husband, who was well might she and Adam hope to be

with her, and he did eat. as God, if they eat of it. But however

1 Gen. iii. i. agreeable this fiction is in the mariner

m Milton, book ix. supposes Eve to the poet has most elegantly painted it,

have been much surprised at hearing yet it can be but an elegant fiction.

the serpent speak, and represents her Moses suggests nothing like it, nor is

to ask, how he came by that ability; it likely that God would have per-

and him to answer, that he was raised mitted what might have given a more

to that attainment by eating of the than ordinary appearance and strength

fruit of the forbidden tree, and that to the temptation. See hereafter.

she hence argued, that if the dumb n Book viii. 357 413, &c.

animal was so heightened beyond his Ibid.

406

THE CREATION AND

before us plain facts, flatly contradicting all these assertions.
If Adam had a true and innate knowledge and apprehension
of the nature of God, how could he have been so ignorant
of him with whom he had to do, as to think him such an one,
that the getting behind the cover of a few trees would hide
him from his presence?? or, if he philosophically knew himself,
had full and innate apprehensions of the use and light of his
own reason, and of all that could come within the reach of
it, what room could there be for the serpent frivolously to
offer to open further either his eyes or his understanding?
Rationally judging, and having a right judgment of every
thing that came before either his outward perception or
his inward reflection, the serpent's temptation must have ap-
peared intuitively absurd to him; he would both have felt
himself not to want such additions as the serpent suggested,
and have had a better thought of things, than to be capable
of imagining that the improvements proposed to him could
arise from doing what the serpent recommended. We may
therefore, if we will write at random, say high things of
Adam and Eve's natural and philosophical knowledge; but
we can never make them appear to have had as yet much
science, if in fact they knew things no better than to be ca-
pable of thinking that a serpent might naturally be able to
speak to them ; or of grossly believing that meat for the body
might be food for the understanding ; that the fruit of a tree,
which they saw growing in their garden, could be a thing to
be desired to eat to make one wise 11 ; a sentiment not to be di-
gested by any one that has, and consequently must speak our
first parents as yet not to have attained advances of real
knowledge.

Adam, as soon as he received the breath of life, became a
living soul 1 ; but he had a body made of the ground 8 , and
his soul was, as our souls are, shut up within the inclosure
of this tabernacle: in this state, the things without him, the
material objects of this world, could raise in him no ideas
but as sensations of them were conveyed to him by his out-

P Gen. iii. 8. q Ver. 6. r Ch. ii. 7. Ibid.

FALL OF MAN. 407

ward senses 1 ; and he could naturally judge of what he thus
perceived no farther than vQv^r}Qr\vai at&>j r&v bibofj.ev<i>v u , to
think of them suitably to what was given, or presented to
him ; and if he looked inward upon himself, he could form
ideas of his own mind only as he made trial of the capacity
and powers of it, and thereby came to know them : so that
experience only could give him naturally an increase of
knowledge. Let us suppose him to turn his thoughts from
himself to an higher object; to consider him who made
him ;

Say, of God above

What could he reason, but from what he knew ?

Pope*.

He knew of God, as yet, no more than what the words
which God had spoken to him could teach him, or his own
few and first observations of things done might lead him to
infer.

There are indeed some texts of Scripture, which, if not
rightly considered, may lead us into mistake in this matter.
St. Paul tells us of the Gentiles, who had not had the light
of the law of Moses, that they did by nature the things con-
tained in the law: not having the law, they were a law unto
themselves : which, he says, shew the work of the law written
in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their
thoughts accusing, or else excusing one another*. Are we now to
conclude from hence, that God has actually wrote, as it were,
or implanted innate sentiments of duty upon the heart of man?
I should rather apprehend, that a true essay of the human un-
derstanding, a true judgment of whatever was or still is the
ability of man, will shew us, that a capacity of attaining just
notions of our duties, and not an actual possession of real senti-
ments of them, is the utmost of what the first man was created

t This I think must be allowed as the five operations, or senses, which

unquestionable ; see Locke's Essay on the author of Ecclesiasticus represents

Human Understanding, b. ii. c. i. un- him to have been endued with as we

less we could imagine Adam to have are, Ecclus. xvii. 5.

been a creature originally furnished u Wisdom vii. 15.

with different abilities of perceiving x Essay on Man, Ep. i.

the things without him, other than y Rom. ii. 14, 15.

408 THE CREATION AND

in, or we any of us are born to ; and a careful examination of
what is offered by St. Paul will in nowise lead us to con-
clude more. The Apostle elsewhere tells us of the Gentiles
he spake of, that that which may be known of God was
manifest in them; for that God had shewed it unto them 2 . The
question is, How had God shewed it ? Had God planted it
innate in their hearts ? This was not the sentiment of St.
Paul : rather, he tells us, that God had shewed it unto them ;
for or because the invisible things of him from the creation of
the world are clearfy seen, being understood by the things which
are made*. The Gentile nations, of whom the Apostle here
and elsewhere treats, had so far read the volume of the book
of nature, had so far either heard of, or known and consi-
dered the works of God, as to be without excuse*, if the
thence apparent duties of their natures were not collected
by them. But we should be in fact mistaken, and err from
the meaning of St. Paul, if we should expect to find im-
planted in men's hearts real characters of their duties further
than the book of nature has been read and considered by
them ; or they have attained a knowledge of them, more or
less perfect, as they have happened to hear of, and be in-
structed from some of the revelations which God has made
to the world: and consequently, speaking rationally of
Adam, whilst he had as yet heard and seen but a very few
of God's works, and those few had not been so repeatedly
examined by him, and compared with things that in time
followed, as to give him a various trial, and an enlarged
and corrected judgment; he cannot be thought to have at-
tained a great extent of any kind of knowledge. All natural
science has grown amongst men as observation has gradu-
ally increased it; and therefore to say of Adam, that, as
soon as he lift up his eyes, after he was created, and saw the
sun and moon and stars, which gave light upon the earth,
he instantaneously knew that these lights of heaven were to
beybr signs and for seasons, for days and for years c 9 is to talk
very irrationally : he cannot be supposed to have known,
before his first evening shewed it, that the sun was to have a

z Rom. i. 19. Ver. 20. b Ibid. c Gen. i. 14.

FALL OF MAN. 409

going down; nor can we imagine that the next morning told
him of the rising day what would have enabled him to have
said with the poet,

aliusque et idem

Nasceris. Hor.

He could not have told whether the rising sun of his second
day was a new one, or the same which had the day before
shone upon him. In time he formed a better judgment of
these and other appearances ; but as ages passed, many of
them abounding in all kinds of learned disquisitions, before
it was apprehended that the sun did not move round the
earth, it must be a wild notion to think, that in the begin-
ning of the world our first father was possessed of an innate
astronomy. All notions of his innate knowledge of the nature
of the animals must, if thus considered, fall likewise to the
ground; he could know nothing of them until he observed
them : and then, nothing farther than what he observed, or
concluded from observations made of them. And, of God,
he knew that he had received an audible injunction not to
eat of one tree ; and he had heard from the same voice other
particulars ; and in the formation of Eve he had had a sensi-
ble conviction, that he that spake to him had great power to
make or create, and consequently to destroy ; and he hence,
as soon as he had disobeyed him, reasoned, that he might
justly be afraid ; he was afraid, and hid himself d : but
having had nothing yet told or shewed him, whereby he
might consider the omnipresence of God, the imperfection of
his own sight led him to imagine he might get out of God's
sight, if he hid himself behind the cover of a few trees. Of
himself he had experienced, that he saw, and heard, and
felt, and lived ; that he tasted the food he was to eat ; that
it revived his spirits, and strengthened his heart e . And though
I cannot but think that he had a clear intellect to reason
and conclude of things as far, though no farther, than they
appeared to him, or he had experience of them : yet hitherto
he could have made no advance of knowledge that could

d Gen. iii. 10. e Psalm civ. 15.

410 THE CREATION AND

shew him whether there were or were not juices in the fruit
of a particular tree, which might literally cheer both God
and man f ; give fresh life and spirits to the body, and to the
mind wisdom and understanding also : and therefore he did
not hereupon know enough to argue and refute the false-
hood which the imagination of Eve seems to have proposed s,
that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.

It will, I am sensible, be here said by some, that they do
not assert Adam and Eve to have had innate any actual
knowledge : but that they apprehend both our first parents
to have been created with such powers of capacity, that
they would naturally form just and true notions of things,
as they came under their inspection and observation : so as
not really to want any further instruction concerning any
thing which they ought or could be obliged to know, than
what might naturally arise to them from their own senses
and understanding. Our modern rationalists think, that they
cannot only support this notion from reason, but that they
can bring Scripture also to confirm it. They argue that
" Moses says, that God created man in his own image^, and
" that Solomon tells us that God made man upright*: the
" meaning of both which expressions taken together im-
" ports, they say, that man was endued with rational moral
" faculties, resembling the moral perfections of his Creator ;
" was made perfect in his kind, capable to know and fulfil
" the duties, and attain the end, of his creation, by a right
" use of his rational faculties, which were given him to be
" the guide and rule of his life and actions : and therefore
" that the reason which God gave must have been sufficient
" to direct him to those duties which God required of him,
" and to conduct him to that happiness, which is the natu-
" ral effect, or, by God's will, the appointed reward, of the
" performance of it."

The writer, from whom I have cited these words, did, I
dare say, conceive himself to have guarded his expressions
in a manner liable to no exception : but he has, I think, the

f Judges ix. 13. g Gen. iii. 6. l> Gen. i. 26. Eccles. vii. 29.

FALL OF MAN.

misfortune common to these writers, not to hit the least
tittle of the meaning of the texts cited by them.

God, he says from Moses, created man in his own image.
It cannot, I think, be disputed, but that in a most obvious
sense of the words, man's being created in the image of
God may refer to the make of his body, and intimate, that
he was formed not after the fashion of any other of the
living creatures, but was made in a pattern higher than
they : a more excellent form than theirs was given to him.

Pronaque cum spectant animalia csetera terras,

Os homini sublime dedit, ccelumque tueri

Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus. Ov. Met*.

It is an expression not unfrequent in the Hebrew Scriptures,
to say of things, that they are of God, if they are in quality
eminent above others, which have no more than common
perfections. In this manner of speaking, trees of a prodi-
gious growth are called trees of God, or the trees of the Lord :
such were the cedars of Lebanon ; so greatly flourishing and
full of sap, as to be for that reason called the trees of the
Lord, trees which he had planted 1 . And thus man might be
said to be made in the image of God : his outward form
was of a different make, far more respectable, superior to
the make of all other creatures of the world; and accord-
ingly, to speak suitably of it, the expression is used, which,
in the language of Moses's times, was commonly said of any
thing that was so superlatively excellent as to have nothing
like to, or to be compared with it : no image of any thing
in the world was equal to, or like that of man ; and there-
fore man was said to be created in the image of God.

I would observe, that St. Paul appears to confirm to us
that the expression of Moses may carry this meaning : A
man, he says, ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is

k In like manner the Roman philo-
er: Figuram corporis habilem et
aptam ingenio humano dedit : nam cum
ccsteros animantes abjecissetadpastum,

solum hominem erexit, ad coelique

conspectum excitavit : turn speciem ita
formavitoris,ut ineapenitus reconditos

mores qffingeret: nam etoculi nimis ar-
g-uti, quemadmodum animi affecti si-
mus, loquunlur, et is, qui appellutur
vultus, qui nullo in animante esae prte-
ter hominem potest, indicat mores.
Cic. deLegib. 1. i.
1 Psalm civ. 16.

412 THE CREATION AND

the image and glory of God : but the woman is the glory of the
man m . The Apostle is here inquiring, not into the dignity
of the mind or soul of the man or the woman, but consider-
ing what ought to be the outward appearance or dress of
their persons; and he would not have the man's head co-
vered, because the man was the image of God : his form was
original, not the copy of another ; and therefore, to express
its original superiority above all others, is said to be of God.
But the woman herein was inferior ; she was made after the
likeness and similitude of man : she therefore, in the senti-
ment of the Apostle, ought to wear a covering upon her
head, in acknowledgment of her not being suce formce, the
original pattern of the make she was of; she was herein in-
ferior to the man n , in that the glory or dignity of her make
was his ; she was the glory of the man, the high excellence of
her make was but a copy of what he the man was made in
before her.

But the words of Moses bear also a further sense, and yet
not that which the writer I have cited would put upon
them. God created man to be immortal, and made him an
image of his own eternity . Herein a great original difference
May appear to have been intended between the spirit of man
that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth down-
ward?: and that Moses had in view this particular, when
he said of man, that he was created in the image of God,
seems agreeable to the reason given for the early law pro-
nounced against murder : Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man
shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man<\.
God so made man to be immortal, that it is an high insult
and violence against the design of God's creation to put an
end by murder to the life of man : and therefore, surely at
the hand of every man's brother will God require the life of
man r . And this explains our Saviour's calling the Devil a

m i Cor. xi. 7. wear a covering on the head was a

n I should here observe, that in the token of inferiority and subjection.

ancient times, contrary to our modern Wisdom ii. 23.

customs, the having the head free, or P Eccles. iii. 21.

without the incumbrance of being co- <1 Gen. ix. 6.

vered, was a mark of dignity and su- r Ver. 5 .

periority; and on the contrary, to

FALL OF MAN.

413

murderer from the beginning*: a murderer ; he had acted con-
trary to the design of God concerning the life of man, in
that when God had created man in his own image, to be an
image of his own eternity ; to be immortal : nevertheless,
through envy of the Devil, death came into the world*.

Thus if we explain the text of Moses, without going be-
yond what was the intended meaning of it, we shall find
that this text says no more than that man was originally
made to be of a more excellent form than all other creatures,
and that he was made to be immortal ; had not, what God
did not make for man u , death through sin come into the
world x . But there is so little foundation to infer from this
text, that Moses had any thought to represent, that man
was made to resemble his Maker in his powers of know-
ledge y, that such a thought appears not only not deducible

8 John viii. 44.

t Wisdom ii. 24.

u Ch. i. 13.

x Rom. v. 12.

y If we examine what the heathen
inquirers argiied upon this subject, we
shall find them greatly more correct
than our modern reasoners. They all
indeed, except a more sensual sect,
Epicurus and his followers, (see Cic. de
Nat. Deor. 1. i. c. 18.) saw plainly, that
man could in nowise resemble God in
his outward form and figure: and
therefore would have understood Mo-
ses's expression of man's being made in
the image of God, as to man's outward
form, in no higher sense than I have
above mentioned; namely, that man
was of an extraordinary and singular
make, eminent above other creatures,
of a form appropriated to man. As
to his inward powers, they saw in
them what was far more worthy than
his outward person to be compared to
God. Tu sic habeto NON ESSE TE

MORTALEM, SED CORPUS HOC. NeC

enim is, quern forma istu declarat, sed
mens cujusque is est quisque: non ea
figura, quce digito demonstrari potest :
Deum te igitur scito esse, siquldem Deus
est, qui i>iget, qui sentit, qui meminit,
qui providet, qui tarn regit et modera-
turet movetid corpus cuipreepositusest,
quam hunc mundum ille princeps Dens.
Cic. Somn. Scipionis. But however
they thus thought in general terms of a

resemblance in man of the divine na-
ture, they always, when the subject
called for it, so explained themselves,
as not loosely to assert, that in man,
motus iste celer cogitationis, acumen,
solertia, quam rationem vocamus; Cic.
de Nat. Deor. lib. iii. c. 27. the mere fa-
culty of human reason made man like to
God : rather they argued, the likeness of
man to God to arise from this faculty so
managed and conducted as to possess
us of virtue; adsimi'dtudinem Deo pro-
pius accedebat humana virtus quam
Jigura. Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1. i. c. 34.
And thus Plato, OVK fcrrtv avrf 6fMi6ra-
rov ovdev J) fcs &i> ri/j.wf oS ycvr)Tai ore
SiKai6raros. Plat, in Thesetet. Thus

again, 'Ofwiwffis Qfip StKaiov ical

ofjLoiov (j.(Ta (ppovfjffews yevcffOai. Id.
ibid. Again, 'O n\v <r(i><l>p(av T)n.S>v 6f$
(pi\os, O/JLOIOS yap' 6 e /x?? ffutypwv a.v6-
P.OIOS Tf Kal Sidupopos Kal &8iKos. Plat,
de Legib. 1. iv. We are here to observe,
that these ancients in nowise, like our
modern rationalists, crudely affirm man
to be endowed with moral faculties
resembling the moral perfections of his
Creator; but they distinguish the fa-
culties of man then only to render us
like to God, when they are so con-
ducted as to make us ffwQpoves, so truly
wise, as to be really virtuous. They
did not determine our likeness to God
to consist in our barely having a faculty
of free reason; but they considered,
that we could then only be like God

414 THE CREATION AND

from this text, but absolutely a contradiction to what Moses
expresses upon the subject : for their desire to be ce Elohim,
as, or like to, God in knowing*, was the mistake that be-
came our first parents' ruin.

Let us now see how the other text will answer the pur-
pose designed to be served by it : God, said Solomon, made
man upright*. The words of Solomon are, God made the man,
Jashar; we might render the word aright. God implanted
in him nothing that was wrong. Adam, before the fall,
had not in him the evil inclinations of a corrupt nature, and
the not having these was the rectitude in which he was
created. When the sentence of death passed upon him, he,
who before was an image of God's eternity, was now become
mortal, his body. became corruptible; and a corruptible "body
presseth down the soul b . He now began to, have sensual ap-
petites and desires, which created him many inclinations
which he had to strive against, if he would strive against sin :
he was now fallen into the imperfection in which we all
labour,

Video meliora proboque,

Deteriora sequor .

He might now many times see and approve the things that
are most excellent, and yet have an heart that might cause
him often to be such as we, the best of us, are, who, as there
is no man upon earth that sinneth not c , do in many things

when we made ourselves just and holy, the standard of all rectitude and truth ;

SlKaioi Kal Sffioi fJLfra </>poHj<reo>s ; or, in but they affirmed man in nowise to

other words, when we attained a right be so ; but to want a measure or rule

understanding *to depart from iniquity, to adjust his judgment by, in order to

They observed the difference between act aright : 'O S^ e&s rifjuv iravrwv xp~n-

reason and right reason : they pointed /j-druv /j.Tpof &i/ efoj /u<A.i(rra, Kal iro\v

out an height of reason, which all /j.a\\ov ^ irov TIS, &s tyaviv, avQpootros.

that are endued with may in all things Plato de Leg. lib. iv. Which one

act intuitively aright ; but this they al- point, duly considered, is that sobriety

lowed to be above man : Quartus au- of knowing and estimating ourselves,

tern gradus et altissimus est eorum qui which will lead us to admit both the

natura boni sapientesque gignuntur, sentiments I above observe Moses to

quibus a principio innascitur ratio recta, hint to us, and what I endeavour to

constansque, qua supra hominem pu- build upon it.

tandaest^Deoquetribuenda. Cic. lib. ii. z Gen. iii. 5.

c. 13. Herein they stated the great a Eccles. vii. 29.

difference between the human nature b Wisd. ix. 15.

and divine : they allowed God to be c i Kings viii. 46.

FALL OF MAN. 415

offend all A . But though before he became corruptible he had
not in him those evil appetites which are since grown so
powerful in our nature, yet it will not follow that God ori-
ginally gave him such a beam of unerring understanding, as
to place him in light that would not admit of mistake and
error.

Decipimur specie recti . Hor.

To this failure Adam was subject in his first estate: and
herein it was that he fell from it. Both Eve and he judged
what the tempter proposed to them to be very right, al-
though it was grossly wrong ; and in the error of their judg-
ment they went astray. Their appetites were not the strength
that prevailed against them: in their judgment lay their
weakness ; they were misled, they were deceived. Thus St.
Paul speaks of their transgression, not imputing it to their
corrupt inclinations, but to their erring in their under-
standing ; the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty*: the
insinuation of the tempter became too subtle for them.
Herein therefore the writers, who use the text of Solomon
with the view above mentioned, mistake the true meaning of
Solomon : from Solomon's asserting that God made man up-
right^ they would infer that God gave Adam a perfection
of actual understanding, by which he might, without further
direction, have devised his own way aright, to complete him-
self in every moral virtue ; whereas Solomon says no more,
than that God made man,y#sAr, rectus, i. e. not crooked or
perverse; or, as we render it in English, . upright, i. e. not
inclined or propense to evil. Solomon speaks Adam to have
had originally a rectitude of heart or inclination : but these
writers would infer, that he had a perfection of head, an
unerring judgment; whereas these are two very different
things. I can apprehend Adam to have had a natural capa-
city quick and lively, far greater than we have; but as he
had far less acquaintance with, and information of, the na-
tures of things than even we have had, his actual know-
ledge, at the time of his being seduced, must have been less

d James iii. 2. e 2 Cor. xi. 3.

416

THE CREATION AND

than our knowledge is : and consequently it happened in
fact, that he erred in a matter, wherein no one of a moderate
share of improved understanding would have been so grossly
mistaken.

But may we not correct a little the expressions used in
setting forth the pretended rational scheme contended for,
and query upon the subject as follows? Is not the spirit of
man the candle of the Lord*? Is there not a spirit in mans,
created with abilities of reasoning suited to his state ? Is
there not herein a natural inspiration of the Almighty to give
man understanding^, as soon as we grow up to know the use
of it ? And if Adam was created not a child, but a man ; if
he was created upright, having a right heart, not biassed by
evil appetites, must he not have had all the powers of a sound
mind? And what can we say or think he could want more ?
Would not things have gradually appeared to him in their
true light? His mind, not corrupted, would have admitted
them to have been rationally considered ; and his knowledge,
as it grew and increased, being sincere and unbiassed, would
have led him in a right use of his reason* unto true senti-
ments of his duty, as the relations of life came to be known
by him ; so as that he might, by his own natural light, have
gone wisely and virtuously through the world. I might
cite many passages from the best and most virtuous heathen
writers to shew, that they seem to have sometimes thought
the human ability of this sort k : but I might again cite
other places from them, which lay a foundation for not
being positive in this nice disquisition 1 . And herein they

f Prov. xx. 27. k Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio,

S Job xxxii. 8. naturtecongruenSjdiffusainomneSjCon-

b Ibid. I think I need not here ob- stans,seHipitema,qu<zvocetadofficium

serve, that the word nnra: here used, jubendo ; vetando a fraude deterreat.

which we translate inspiration, is the Cic. de Rep. lib. iii. in Fragment. Erat

word used by Moses, Gen. ii. 7. to sig- enim ratio profecta a rerum natnra et

nify the inspiration, or breath of life: ad recte faciendum impellens et a de-

and that therefore we may justly here licto avocans. Id. de Leg. lib. ii.

take it to mean, not what we Chris- 1 Si tales nos natura genuisset,ut earn

tians call the grace of God, but rather ipsam intueri et perspicere, eademque

that original ability of mind which optima duce cursumvitce conjicere posse-

God has given unto man. runs; hand erat sane quod quisquam. ra-

i Tldvra TO. irpbs T^V Kryaiv ru>v aya- tionem ac doctrinam requireret: nunc

Quv (TWT\ovvTa Sia ^pax^ov vireypaibev parvulos nobis dedit igniculos, quos ce-

6 \6yos rb rris tyvxw avroKlv^rov. Hie- leriter malis moribus npinionibusque

rocles. fle/irirati sic restinguimus, vt nusquam

FALL OF MAN. 417

preserved a sincerity of inquiry, far more to be respected than
the arrogant forwardness of our modern contenders for the
sufficiency of human reason : these latter seldom fail to shew
an unwarrantable disposition to assume, without proving,
that God gave no revelation until men had first departed
from the guidance of their reason, and wanted to be brought
back, to be told the use and the light of it. And they
hastily conclude, that if human reason at first was not in
itself a sufficient guide and direction for man, it will follow
that God did not sufficiently provide for him. They tell us,
" that God at first left men to the guidance of natural light,
" by a due use of reason to discover what best became the
" station they were placed in, and what duties were incum-
" bent upon them, in the relation they stood to God as their
" creator, and to one another as fellow-creatures ; expect-
" ing no service from them but what their own reason
" would suggest, and the very nature and circumstances of
" their being would have recommended." And they add,
that " God did not interpose until man had herein greatly
" failed." But all this is directly contrary to what Moses
informs us : according to Moses, after Adam was created,
before he had had time to do, I might say to think of, good
or evil, the voice of God commanded him, saying, Of every
tree of the garden thou may est freely eat ; but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. A com-

naturce lumen apparent. Cic. Tusc. Qu. had given him ; he would have con-
lib, iii. in init. Est profecto animi medi- sidered man as not admitted naturam
cina philosophia. Id. ibid. This able ipsam intueri, but so far only endowed,
writer appears to me here to allow, that as that though he had received ratio-
men by nature are not so made as to nem a Deo, yet he might make it ho-
look at once to the bottom and truth of nam aut non bonam a seipso. [The
things; to see, without further informa- reader may find this sentiment sug-
tion than the prompt suggestion of gested by one of the disputants in Cic.
their own reasonings, the true rela- de Nat. Deor. lib. iii.] And therefore he
tions of things, and the moral duties of would have rejoiced in the clear light
their lives. Had he known what we he would have had of man's having all
do, from Moses, of the true origin of the rationem et disciplinam, which he
mankind, he would, I dare say, have supposes him to want, from the di-
allowed, that it might be necessary for rections which, over and above his
man, when he first came into the reason, God began, as soon as man
world, not to be left absolutely to him- came into being, by express revelation
self, to be guided by the parvulos ifjni- to give unto him.
culoa, as he calls them, which God m Gen. ii. 16, 17.

418 THE CREATION AND

mand was here given, such as the reason of man would not
have investigated, had not the voice of God appointed it to
him : and consequently, a service or observation was herein
expected from him, other than what his own reason would
have suggested. But these writers will perhaps say of this
particular command, that it is allegory, and not a fact. Let us
then proceed, and we shall find, that, as soon as Eve was
created, Adam and she were both told that a man should
leave his father and his mother, and should cleave unto his
wife, and that they should be one flesh. This command, as
Moses states it, was, our Saviour tells us, spoken to them by
the voice of God : herein then there is no allegory ; herein
we have the witness of a greater than Moses, that Moses re-
lated what was really fact ; and it is a testimony which, duly
considered, will prove, that both our Saviour used, and the
Jews also, to whom our Saviour spake, received the accounts
of what Moses relates to have been done in the beginning,
not as allegory and fable, but to be read and cited as true
history". God, in fact, declared to Adam and Eve what was
to be the inseparable union of man and wife, and therefore
herein they were not left at first to the guidance of natural
light, by a due use of reason to discover what best became the
station they were placed in to one another, but received a special
direction by an audible voice from their Maker concerning
this relation of life, before they had in any one thing failed
in the use of their reason.

What these writers say further, that to suppose reason, the
reason of man, in itself in any state or circumstances an insuffi-
cient guide, is directly to impeach the Author of reason; is to say,
that God did not give man sufficient abilities to know and do his
duty. This is equally dogmatical ; contradictory to what we
are informed by Moses was in fact the manner in which,
and the abilities with which, Adam and Eve were brought
into the world. Moses does not say that God originally
gave Adam a sufficiency of knowledge for him to depend
solely upon it ; but he abundantly shews us that man was

n Have ye not read? said our Sa- was recorded in Moses's writings. See
viour, appealing, as to fact, to what Matt. xix. 4, &c. above cited.

FALL OF MAN. 419

not left insufficiently provided for, because he shews us how
God would by his voice have directed him, as directions
would be necessary for him. Upon the whole : the texts of
Scripture above cited, for there being in man a light of
reason, do in nowise determine to what degree it is given;
and therefore are not in themselves conclusive against the
necessity of revelation : and whatever else has been offered,
may at best be but the conceits of mere human imagination,
and therefore intrinsecally vain : so that I should apprehend,
if we would proceed as we ought in this inquiry, it may
pertinently be examined, whether in the reason of things it
may not be right that the infinite Creator should make a
rank of rational beings, so far endowed with reason as to be
above the restraint and confinement of instinct, and yet not
endued with so unerring a beam of reason as not to want a
further direction than what would arise from the intima-
tions of their own breasts. After which inquiry carefully
made, we may consider whether man was the creature made
in this rank ; and whether the directions said by Moses to
have been originally given to the man may not be appre-
hended to have been the most proper means to supply his
defects, to make him perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
every thing necessary to his answering the great end of his
creation and being.

CHAP. VL

Concerning the Points above stated.

THE creation of God, as far as we can examine it in the
things that may be known by us, shews us a wonderful con-
nection of all things to one another. If we go to what I
would call the lowest, the most dead and inorganical parts of
matter, it is a question, whether a vegetative life does not
subsist in all ; so slow indeed in some, as that it will escape
our first inspection: but stones and minerals in time shew
enough of it to apprize us, though it be hard to conceive

VOL. IT. E e

*
420 THE CREATION AND

how small its first beginnings are, that probably there is not
any thing in the natural world wherein it really is none.
We may trace a gradual increase of the circulation of it
from the more inert parts, as it were, of matter, to the trees,
and shrubs, and plants, and flowers, whose living growths are
more and more conspicuous, daily ornamented with new ap-
pearances of accrescent variety and alteration : and how
near do some of these come to almost a visible connection
unto the animal world ! It is difficult to ascertain how much
more sensation there is in an oyster, if there really are not
living animals of less sensation than an oyster, of whose mo-
tion we can hardly say more than that it opens its shell to
take in the water and soil that is to feed it, and shuts at the
approach of any thing that may more sensibly affect it, than
in those plants which open their flowers to the soft and
warm air, but will instantly close up and shrivel if any
grosser object be admoved almost near enough to touch
them. If we enter and proceed through the innumerable
varieties of animal life, until we come to those beings in
whom the breath of it is most conspicuous; if we consider
the differences of the discernments of these, and carry on
the progression until we enter the rational world; we may
find, says an ingenious writer , that there are some brutes
that seem to have as much reason and knowledge as some
that are called men : so that the animal and rational creation
do so nearly approach, that if you take the highest of the
one, and compare it with the lowest of the other, there will
scarce be perceived a difference between them. The variety
of the capacities of men considered will carry us over a vast
field, and bring us to the borders of the angelic state : for
man was made but a little lower than the angelsV. How far,
had sin not come into the world, and death by sin, the high-
est and most perfect of men might have improved and come
near to the lowest of the angels, we cannot say ; but if,
from what we can see of the creation of the world, we may

See Locke's Essay on Human Understanding, b. iii. c. 6.
p Heb. ii. 7.

FALL OF MAN.

reason concerning the things that are invisible, supposing
that God created the first man with the highest capacity
that could belong to the rank of being he was of; yet, know-
ing that he was made a little lower than the angels, that
the lowest of these intelligences was made greater than he,
we cannot place man higher than upon an ascent next be-
tween the animal and more intellectual state : and, consider-
ing how it answers to the analogy of things, that all the in-
tellectual powers should each rise gradually, one order above
another, to complete a fulness in God's creation of the hea-
vens and of the earths; it will be no unreasonable sentiment,
that God created man with such powers indeed of reason,
as to be above all that can be come up to by the animal
life; but yet not with so masterly a light of reason as ab-
solutely to want no assistant information. Mr. Pope has ex-
cellently well expressed what I am aiming at. In the crea-
tion of God he observes, that, as

- All must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree ;
Then, in the scale of life and sense, 'tis plain,
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man.
Plac'd on the isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great 1 ".

There must be somewhere, in the ascents up from sense to
the heights of reason, a rank of creatures above the confine-
ments and limitations of instinct ; but not so perfect in their
powers of reason, as to stand in need of none other than
their own direction.

Of this rank the poet deemed man, estimating him made

With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride 8 :

to have light enough to see how he may, with a sufficient
certainty from known premises, draw many important con-

q Without this Plato thought the licavas flvai Plato in Timseo.

heavens would be imperfect : Ovpcwbs r Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. i. 44.

areA^s eaTai, ra yap airavra ev avrqiywir) and ii. 3.

^}<av OVK '{. Ae?5e et fceAAei reAejos s Ibid. Ep. ii. ver. 5.

E e 2

THE CREATION AND

elusions ; but not light enough absolutely to rest satisfied in
the sufficiency of his own wisdom*. The poet gives us
many rational intimations that man must originally have
been formed in this line of being, that there might be a just
gradation in the works of God :

that progressive life may go

Around its width, its depth extend below.
Vast chain of being ! which from God began,
Nature's ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach ! from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing 11 .

The poet further expatiates upon the subject :

Far as creation's ample range extends
The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends.
Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,
From the green myriads in the peopled grass !
How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine !
'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier !
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near x !

And he further hints to us, that we ought not to think it
wrong that man, made to be of this order, has not a larger
share of reason to guide him :

say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault ;

Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought :
His being measur'd to his state and place.
Presumptuous man ! the reason would'st thou find,
Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind ?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less.
What would this man ? would he now upward soar,
And little less than angel, would be more !

On superior pow'rs

Were we to press, inferior must on ours ;

t The Stoic's pride here hinted at sumendam esse sapientiam. Vide Cic.

is, I think, what is expressed in the de Nat. Deor. lib. iii. c. 36.

latter part of the following sentence : Ep. i. 235.

Judicium hoc omnium mortalium est ; x Pope's Essay, Ep. i. 207. and 221.
fortunam a Deo petendam esse, a seipso

FALL OF MAN.

Or in the full creation leave a void,

Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd.

The gen'ral order, since the whole began,

Is kept in nature, and is kept in many.

These sentiments do, I think, most clearly lead us to see,
that, in the reason of things, there must be somewhere in the
universe a being of such, and no greater, powers of reason,
than are here supposed to belong to man; and that this is
our true standard has been the opinion of the best writers 2 ,
and has been confirmed in fact by the experience" of all
ages a : so that for man to talk of his having unerring reason,
or of our wanting no further instruction 13 than a careful at-
tendance to the result of our own judgment, is a vanity that
might sufficiently be exposed in the sentiment offered us in
the book of Job ; Vain man would be wise, though man be
born like a wild ass's colt c : such an independence of under-
standing is an height that we were not made for. We may
think of ourselves as we please ; but from the beginning to
this time, from the time that Adam was brought into the
world until now, he that has thus absolutely trusted in his
own heart^ has been a fool. What a propriety then has it to
the nature of man, that God, as soon as he was created,
made to him, as Moses relates, an especial revelation ! If the
perfection of man could have come merely from his reason,
without doubt no such revelation would have been given
him ; for the all- wise God does nothing superfluously in
vain e : and therefore, since a revelation was in fact made to

y Pope's Essay, Ep. i. 69, &c.

z It is the sentiment expressed by
Cicero, that we are not creatures made
able by nature, naturam ipsam intueri
et perspicere, eademque optima duce
cur sum vitce conficere; but that we
want for this purpose what he calls ra-
tionem ac doctrinam, having only ig-
niculos, which if not properly fed and
cherished will fail and be extinguished.
See Cic. Tusc. Qusest. lib. iii. in princip.
sup. cit. Quartus autem gradus et al-
tissimus eorum est, qui natura boni sa-
pientesque gignuntur: quibus a prin-
ciple innascitur ratio, recta constans-
que, quce supra hominem putanda est,
fteoque tribuenda. Cic. de Nat. Deor.
lib. ii. c. 13.

a Our Scriptures rightly tell us, that
there is no man that sinneth not,
i Kings viii. 46. There is not a just man
upon earthy that doeth good, and sin-
neth not, Eccles. vii. 20. The philoso-
phers say, Sapientiam nemo assequitur.
Vide Cic. de Nat. Deor. lib. iii. c. 32.

b Nam, ut nihii interest, utrum
nemo valeat, an nemo possit valere, sic
non intelligo, quidintersit, utrum nemo
sit sapiens, an nemo esse possit. Vide
Cic. ibid.

c Job xi. 12.

d Prov. xxviii. 26.

e The argument used by the Apo-
stle concerning the law, might, I think,
be justly accommodated to the topic
before us, in words as follow : For

424 THE CREATION AND

man in the beginning, hence know we, that it was neces-
sary, and that his original reason was not alone sufficient for
him. For as to those who say, that the narration of a reve-
lation made to the first man is a mere allegory and fable ;
let not these pretend to argue that, if the original reason of
man was not alone a sufficient guide, then it must follow,
that God did not sufficiently provide for the creature made
thus imperfect : for the answer hereto is, that the revelation
given to Adam, and intended to have been continued over
and above his natural reason, would have been sufficient for
man's natural weakness, and have thoroughly instructed him
more and more unto every good work, if it had not been set
aside and disregarded by him.

CHAP. VII.

Some further Considerations of the original State of our first
Parents; of the Nature of the first Command or Prohibition
made to them, and wherein consisted the Sin of their not ob-
serving it.

THE point we considered in the before-going chapter
was, how far we may reasonably conjecture, from the rank
and order of being man was formed in, that he was made a
creature not of absolute independent understanding. I would
here observe, that a most excellent writer has hinted to us
this very thing: the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus
enumerates the endowments with which, and the direction
under which, God thought fit to bring our first parents into
the world. The Lord, he says, created man of the earth. They
received the use of the five operations of the Lord, and in the
sixth place he imparted them understanding, and in the seventh
speech, an interpreter of the cogitations thereof. Counsel, and a
tongue, and eyes, ears, and a heart, gave he them to understand*.
In these and the three following verses he remarks how God

if there had been reason given unto righteousness would have been by his
Adam such as, or so sufficient, that it reason. See Gal. iii. 21.
might have given him life, verily his f Ecclus. xvii. I 9.

FALL OF MAN. 425

gave unto man his five senses, his ability of speech and un-
derstanding : but he had before observed, that, when God
made man in the beginning, he left him in the hand of his
counsel^. The question is, whose counsel was man now left
in the hand of? The Latin version says sui consilii, his own
counsel; but very absurdly : the Greek text is d(^/cey avrbv tv
Xipt biafiovXiov avrov' not tavrov, his own, but avrov, his, i. e.
God's counsel: and this truly agrees to what follows in the
next verse, if man would have conformed to it. His duty
was to have kept the commandments, /cat TI'HJTIV Troifjo-ai evbo-
Ktas h : he was to have paid unto God viraKoyv rrjs moreoas,
the obedience of faith. The intimation is no other than what
is the substance of all revealed religion, that without faith
it was impossible man should please God 1 ; for that not to fol-
low absolutely the counsels of man's own heart k , but to
fear God, and to keep his commandments, this was to have
been the whole of man 1 . And this is what Moses sets before
us : he tells us, that God made man ; but, over and besides
making him a living soul, and creating him, as Solomon
speaks, jashar, aright, having nothing in him not meet for an
intelligence of his order and rank of being; having given
him senses and understanding in such measure as his Maker
thought fit to bestow upon him m ; over and above all, he
gave him a commandment, which, if he would have faith-
fully kept to and observed, would have led him unto every
thing sufficient for him. But,

g Ecclus. xv. 14. Know thy own point : this kind, this

h Ibid. due degree

i Heb. xi. 6. Of blindness, weakness, Heav'n be-

k The following our own counsels is, stows on thee. Pope, Ep. i. 283.

in Scripture-meaning, the deserting or He ought not to have aimed to be

departing from what God has revealed, knowing as God, but, obeying what God

to do what seemeth right in our own commanded, thereby to have learned

eyes. See Deut. xii. 8. &c. and many and done the duties of his life ; but
other places that might be cited. In reasoning pride our error lies,

1 Eccles. xii. 13. All quit their sphere, and rush into

m Ibid. vii. 20. His imperfect rea- the skies.

son would have been the occasion of Men would be angels, angels would
no evil, if he had not departed from be gods.

observing the commandments of God. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell,
Adam's ability of reason was such as it Aspiring to be angels, men rebel:
ought to be in one of his rank of be- And who but wishes to invert the laws
ing, and the important thing to him Of order, sins against tli eternal
was, to cause. Pope, Ep. i. 123.

426 THE CREATION AND

The difficulty which objectors raise against interpreting
literally what Moses relates of the command here said to be
given, lies in their conceiving the command to be in itself
in nowise rationally conducing to man's perfection. It is
impossible, they think, that such a being as God is should
appoint so great a weight of the happiness or misery of
mankind to depend upon a matter in itself of so little real
importance as the eating or not eating of the fruit of a par-
ticular tree a. Here, I confess, they start what ought to be
examined very considerately, and is not to be so hastily de-
termined as some imagine, who, I think, add to, instead of
removing, the stumblingblock by their unaccountable ratio-
cinations. They say, " God had laid the whole stress and
" weight of his authority upon this one command. If," say
they, " you suppose a case so circumstanced, that if a son's
" disobedience to a father, in some one particular, in itself of
" no moment, will infer not merely a neglect, but even a
" contempt of his parent's authority ; be the matter of the
" offence what it will, will it not deserve the severest re-
" sentment? What the son thinks a trivial thing, and in
" common estimation may pass as such, he will presume the
" father will think so too : but had the father expressly
" laid the whole weight of his authority upon this one
" thing ; had he expressly said beforehand, Son, whatever
" else you may think to do to please or shew regard to me
" shall have no acceptance, unless in this one easy thing,
" which I make and appoint to be the test of your duty,
" you carefully obey me : for upon your failure herein, I
" will most absolutely treat you as a rebel. Should the son
" after all this presume to offend in this one point, would
" any reasonable man plead it to be excusable 2" I confess,
such a defence as this shocks me exceedingly. It is obvious
that the unbeliever will readily reply ; " Should a man
" build the most magnificent habitation in the world, and
*' add to it in estate every desirable possession, but in some
" one room of his house should set up a piece of wood,

n Id utique videtur gravissimum et ob rem exiguam. Burnet, drchcrnl. p.
asperrimum quod gentem humanam 296.
plexisse, imo perdidisse dicatur Deus,

FALL OF MAN. 427

" with this strict prohibition to his son : As a mark of my
" authority, as a test of your obedience to me your father, I
" command that this one piece of wood be never touched
" by you ; for I have made it my will, that if ever you
" touch it, an absolute disherison shall take place against you
" and your posterity for ever." Should the son now offend
herein, I will not, says the Freethinker, ask so much as a
question about the son ; I give him up for a fool, to receive
the fruits of his trifling impertinence : but I must inquire
concerning the father, What may posterity, considering such
a ruin of a whole family unto all generations, think of him,
who made so trifling an injunction so peremptory and so
penal ?

It will not be admitted that we write worthily of God, if
we suppose him to have given Adam a commandment of no
real moment, only to make his neglect of it, if he should
happen to neglect it, most terribly destructive. God is not
man, that he should lay the stress of his authority in caprice ;
upon a matter of no moment whether it be observed or no :
and therefore, if we would give unto him the honour due
unto his name, it will be proper to consider, whether such
as God had made to be the nature of man ; such a com-
mand, as Moses describes in the prohibition of the forbidden
tree, was not highly fit, I might say necessary, to be given
him : and whether, this command being broken, it could
otherwise be in the reason and nature of things, as God had
made them, unless he had created things anew, than that the
punishment and ruin threatened for man must take place ;
for that otherwise man might not have had a way back to
honour, to glory, to immortality. If we can, in such a tract
of examination as this, search and find any grounds to be-
lieve God, in what Moses writes, to have dispensed to our
first parents no otherwise than suitably to their natures, we
shall see great reason for all that is set before us concern-
ing the proceedings of his providence, as Moses has related
them.

The prophet Jeremiah argued to the Jews, that God spake
not unto their fathers concerning 'burnt-offerings and sacrifices :
but this thing commanded he them, saying, Obey my voice, and

428 THE CREATION AND

/ will be your God, and ye shall be my people . A directing
intimation hence arises, that the great end and design of the
legal institutions were to discipline and to exercise the Jews
to obey God. In like manner, when God thought fit to
make the covenant of circumcision with Abraham, the de-
clared design of what was instituted was, that Abraham
should walk before God, and thereby be perfect P. And we
are thus to consider the commandment given to Adam con-
cerning the forbidden tree ; not as if God spake to him con-
cerning a tree, merely to preserve that inviolate ; but he
herein commanded him this one thing, namely, Obey my
voice indeed, to do whatever I shall declare to be the duties
of thy life : not that God required that man should obey his
voice purely for the sake of, and to lay a stress upon, his own
authority ; but because it was necessary for man not to be
left to his own guidance, but to be kept in the hand of God's
counsel. Adam, when created, was not so made as that
directions absolutely right in themselves would arise to him,
from his own judgment of things, for the whole guidance of
his life ; and therefore God gave him a command not to eat
of a particular tree, as he afterwards gave to Abraham the
command of circumcision : as Abraham received the com-
mand of circumcision to be the sign, a seal of the righteousness
of faith q , so Adam received the command of not eating of
the forbidden tree to be a sign, an attestation, a standing and
inviolate memorial, that he was not to follow his own inven-
tions, but truly and faithfully to obey God.

If we consider the commandment concerning the forbidden
tree in this light, the narration of it will be greatly cleared
of the difficulties surmised to be in what Moses has said of
it. In every revelation which God has made unto men it
is observable, that some positive institution or institutions
are enjoined for the receivers of such revelations truly to
pay unto God, in obeying them, the obedience of faith ; i. e.
to believe and to do whatever God is pleased to declare to
them, or demand of them. It is thus that we receive the
two ordinances which Christ has appointed us in the New

o Jerem. vii. 22, 23. P Gen. xvii. i. q Rom. iv. n.

FALL OF MAN. 429

Testament, baptism, and the communion of bread and wine.
It was thus that the Jews were bound to observe the rites,
and to make the sacrifices, of the law by Moses ; even as
Abraham before received the command of circumcision 1 ".
And thus unto Adam was given the injunction not to eat of
the particular tree that was called the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil: of which command we can no more say,
that God did not literally enjoin our first parents not to
eat of that tree, than we can say, that he did not literally
enjoin Abraham the circumcision of the flesh; or the Israelites
to offer the sacrifices which are directed in the law; or us
Christians the washing of water in baptism, and the eating
of bread and drinking of wine in remembrance of our Sa-
viour, as they are enjoined by him. Upon the whole, the
interpreting literally what Moses says of the prohibited tree,
and afterwards of the tree of life, does not make the texts
that speak of them tbtas ^TrtAwews 8 ; sets up no singular or pe-
culiar notion in religion, which has nothing like it in the
other Scriptures ; but rather it is so truly Kara avaXoylav rfjs
iriarrc&s*, has such an agreement with what is read of a like
nature from faith to faith in all the subsequent revelations
which God has been pleased to make unto men, that it ap-
proves itself, in shewing the way of God to lead man through
the world, to have been in this point none other than one
and the same in principle, though diversified in circum-
stances, as the different circumstances of different ages might
require, from the very beginning of man down to these last
times, and is to continue the same until our state here be
fulfilled.

The objectors to a literal interpretation of Moses's account
of the two particular trees of the garden do therefore vainly
think themselves to have a difficulty insuperable in asking,
How could there be in nature trees that could bear such
fruits as seem by a literal interpretation of Moses to be as-
cribed to the tree of knowledge and to the tree of life?
For if any one should ask us concerning baptism, What sort
of water can that be which can give the washing of regene-

r Rom. iv. ii. s 2 Pet. i. 20. t Rom. xii. 6.

430 THE CREATION AND

ration ? or concerning the Lord's Supper, What can we
conceive of the natural nourishment or juices of that bread
and that wine, from the eating and drinking of which we
may be made partakers of the body and of the blood of
Christ? Would any one, who thinks soberly upon the
benefits ascribed to the doing these things, as God has com-
manded them, find himself at a loss to answer in these matters ?
or would he apprehend the things commanded to be a mere
allegory ; and that we are not enjoined literally to use real
water, or to eat and drink real bread and real wine ! Rather,
how much more reasonably may we see and apprehend, that
as we eat the bread and drink the wine, which God has com-
manded in assurance of the faith, that, if we obey God, it will
be unto us according to his word, to give us eternal life, to
raise us up at the last day" ; even so might Adam, having
done the will of God, when God should direct it, have
literally put forth his hand, and taken of the tree of life, and
eaten and have lived for ever*. And as we are to be washed
with water as Christ has required, and God will give us of
his holy Spirit, both to think and to do above what we
otherwise will be able of our own sufficiency, presumptu-
ously assuming to stand in our own strength without him;
so ought Adam, literally speaking, not to have eaten of the
forbidden tree, and he would have continued in the hand of
God's counsel, and not have corrupted himself and his way
before God : not that meat, or the abstaining from any meat,
recommendeth unto God; not that the washing or not washing
with water is in itself any thing ; rather, we may, and
Adam and Eve might have eat, or not eat, and therein have
been neither the better nor the worse, had there not been
the commandment of God. The tree prohibited was, I ap-
prehend, like other trees of the garden, pleasant to the eyes,
and good for food; but the point to have been considered
was, whether, in observing the prohibition not to eat of this
one tree, the man was not to keep himself in the hand of
God's counsel, not to take upon himself to be his own inde-
pendent director, but to have obeyed absolutely, wherein

u John vi. 54. x Gen. iii. 22.

FALL OF MAN.

soever God was pleased to give him special directions, to
live according to every word which should proceed from the
mouth of God*. If man had persevered herein, as God gave
him one law for a relative duty 7 , he would in like manner,
as occasions required, have given him others also, which
otherwise, through man's inexperience of the natures of
things, he would have erred in investigating for himself;
until God's word having thus been a lantern to his feet, and
a light to his paths, man might, through it, have attained a
right understanding, and having, as long as and wherein
soever he might want them, been guided by God's counsels*,
be thereby made gradually wise, meet, and fit to be received
unto God into glory. But, on the other hand, man, rejecting
this the counsel of God towards him, and taking upon him-
self to judge absolutely for himself; it hence came to pass,
that, not having a light of actual knowledge of his own suffi-
cient to preserve him from error, he would find, that, how-
ever God had created him (jashar) able, under the directions
designed him, to go aright into the duties of his life ; yet
now, not keeping himself within this guidance, but becom-
ing a follower of his own cogitations, he would become a
creature full of error, and be in