with infinite condefcenfion, to have accommodated himself to times and the ftate of popula

and prefent times, and with every perfon of enlightened conceptions, that beasts are endowed with fome knowledge. We do not find God making a covenant with trees or with ftones that have no fenfe; but he does with the beafts, whom it has pleased him to endow with fenfes, frequently more exquifite than our own, and confequently with those ideas that are neceffarily connected with fenfe. It is for this reason, that he prohibits the barbarous custom of feeding upon their blood, the blood being the fource of life, and confequently of fenfe. Take away all the blood from an animal, and all his organs will immediately cease from action. It is therefore with the greatest justice that we find it faid in fo many different parts of the Holy Scripture, that the foul, that is to fay, what was called the fenfitive foul, is in the blood opinion perfectly agreeable to nature, and as fuch received by all nations.

; an

It is upon this opinion that we found that pity which we ought to fhow to all animals. It is one of the feven precepts of the Noachides that were adopted by the Jews, That no one fhall eat the limb of a living animal. This precept is a proof

tion amongst the inhabitants of the earth; and in this gradation, to have fhewn his paternal

that mankind had formerly the cruelty to mutilate animals, in order to feast upon the limbs fo cut off, and to leave the creatures living, in order to feed fucceffively upon the other parts of their bodies; a custom which we find to have actually fubfifted among fome barbarous nations, witnefs the facrifices offered in the island of Chios to Bacchus Omadios, or the eater of raw flesh. God, by permitting the flesh of animals to ferve us for food, feems to recommend them to our humanity. It must be confeffed, that there is great cruelty in putting them to torture, and that nothing but cuftom could have leffened in us the natural abhorrence of laughtering an animal whom we have fed with our own hands. There have in all times been fects who have made a religious fcruple of fuch practices, as do to this day all the inhabitants of the Peninsula of the Ganges. The whole fect of Pythagoreans, both in Greece and Italy, conftantly abstained from the eating of flesh. And Porphyry, in his book upon Abftinence, reproaches his dif ciples with having quitted their fect only for the fake of indulging an inhuman appetite.

It

love: but these are depths too profound for our weak faculties to measure; I fhall therefore con

It is in my opinion giving up the light of reafon, to pretend to affert, that beafts are no more than mere machines: for, is it not a manifeft contradiction, to acknowledge that God has given them the organs of fenfe, and then to affirm that they have no fenfe

Befides, I think one must never have made any obfervation upon animals, not to distinguish in them the different cries of want, suffering, joy, fear, love, anger, and indeed all other affections of the mind or body; furely, it would be very strange, that they should fo well exprefs what they have no fenfe of!

This remark may furnish abundant matter of reflection to inquifitive minds, in relation to the power and goodness of the Creator, who has been pleafed to bestow life, fenfe, ideas, and memory,. on those beings, whofe organs he has formed with his own all-powerful hand. As to us, we neither know how thefe organs are formed, how they are unfolded, in what manner we receive life, nor by what laws fenfe, ideas, memory, and will, are annexed to that life; and yet, in this dark and eterG 6

nal.

1

fine myfelf to my fubject, and proceed to examine the state of non-toleration among the Jews.

It is certain, that in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuetronomy, we find several very rigorous laws and fevere punishments in relation to religious worship. Several able commentators have been greatly puzzled to reconcile these books of Mofes with feveral paffages in the prophets Jeremiah and Amos, and with the famous difcourfe of St. Stephen, as related in the Acts of the Apoftles. Amos fays, that the Jews conftantly worshipped in the wildernefs, Moloc and Chiun, gods whom they had made to themselves t. And Jeremiah exprefsly fays, that God commanded not their fathers concerning burnt-offerings or facrifices in the day that he brought them out of the land of Egypt 1. And St. Stephen in his discourse

nal state of ignorance inherent to our natures, we are perpetually disputing with, and perfecuting each other, like the bulls of the field, who fight with their horns, without knowing for what use, of in what manner thofe horns were given them.

+Amos, ch. v. v. 26.

Jerem. ch. vii. v. 22.

to the Jews abovementioned, fays, "They "worshipped the host of heaven, and that they "neither offered facrifices nor flew beafts, for "the space forty years in the wilderness, but "took up the tabernacle of Moloc and the ftar "of their god Remphan *"

Other criticks again infer from the worship of so many strange gods here mentioned, that the Ifraelites were indulged with having these gods by Mofes; and, in fupport of their opinion they quote the following words in Deuteronomy, "When ye fhall enter into the land of Canaan, 66 ye

shall not do after all the things that we do here this day, every man whatsoever is right "in his own eyes † †.”

* Acts, ch. vii. v. 42.

+ Deut. ch. xii. v. 8.

Several writers have too rafhly concluded from this paffage, that the chapter concerning the golden calf (which is no other than the Egyptian god Apis) has, as well as many other chapters, been added to the books of Mofes.

Eben-Ezra was the first who undertook to prove, that the Pentateuch (or the five books of Mofes)

was