SECT. III.

Peculiar Object of the Hebrew Polity. THE leading object of the Hebrew polity being evidently the worship of one God, as the Creator; it becomes reasonable to inquire how this speculative truth happened to be made the leading object of civil government; or how Moses alone, of all legislators, came to select this article of faith as the foundation-stone of his legislation.

We must descend of course from all high pretensions, and place Moses on a level with Minos or Lycurgus, with Solon or Numa, with Zaleucus or Charondas *. Let them stand on the same footing with respect to their opportunities, and how

*Josephus, in the opening of the Jewish Antiquities, speaking of Moses, might be thought to countenance the idea of his being a human legislator; and any person reading his account of Moses receiving the law, might compare it with the case of Numa or Mahomet. This is to be attributed to the compromising spirit in which Josephus wrote his History.

shall we account for the extraordinary difference which appears in the conduct of the lawgivers, and the nature of their laws? One of the two principal tables of the Mosaic code is solely occupied in providing for the right belief and exclusive adoration of the Creator. A great proportion of the other statutes relate to the mode in which he is to be worshipped. He is declared in a peculiar manner the king or head of the state. A departure from the established belief, and a refusal to worship God under the character assigned to him in the law, is considered as treason, and punished as the most heinous crime. Not to dwell too long on matters that cannot be disputed, it must be obvious to any one who reads the Hebrew laws, that they all refer directly or indirectly to God, as the actual Governor of that people: that the lawgiver seems to think he shall have done all that he need be anxious to effect, if he can establish this belief; and that the whole community professes to have no other bond of union than its sacred observance.

Now, there is no doubt, that the profoundest inquiries of reason terminate in

the belief of one God, as inculcated by Moses. But it is notorious, and will be seen hereafter more particularly, that reason did not succeed in ascertaining this fact generally throughout the ancient world. That Moses then alone, without any advantage denied to others, should penetrate the mists of ignorance, or, which are still more perplexing, the mazes of error; and apprehend the Creator, and the spiritual worship which is due to an immaterial Being: nay, farther, that, not contented with satisfying his own mind of this rational belief, he should fix upon this point as the basis of his legislation and the cement of his civil polity; is a notion too improbable to be received, even with any common authority in its favour; how much more then is it absurd to embrace it, in direct contradiction to the only evidence we possess concerning the establishment of the Hebrew government?

It is true, indeed, that I may be here met by an objection to this effect: that Moses, considered as a mere political legislator, and consulting of course the welfare of his people and the observance of his laws, would naturally be led to prefix to his

legislative code, a history, declaring the dependence of mankind upon a Creator. I am ready to acknowledge that such was the practice of antiquity. It appears, not only in the philosophical treatises of Plato and Cicero*, but still more explicitly in the preamble to the laws of Zaleucus †, legislator of the Locrians. All lawgivers have been convinced of the insufficiency of any sanctions which they can employ, to obtain effectually their object of encouraging virtue and repressing vice, without a resort to some such principle of universal obligation, as the dread of present divine vengeance, or future punishment, affords. All have been convinced that the existence in their society of a strong practical sense of divine government, is more valuable towards restraining those disorders which endanger the peace of their community, than

* Cic. de Leg. ii. 6.

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+ Diod. Siculus, 1. 12. "The first step which the legislator took," says Warburton, Div. Leg. ii. 2. was to pretend an extraordinary revelation from some god, by whose command and direction he framed the laws hc would establish." Bolingbroke, who takes this ground, instances Zoroaster, Hostanes, the Magi, Pythagoras, and Numa.

the most despotic authority or the severest punishments. Thus much is willingly granted.

But it will set this point in a truer light, if we refer to the legislators of antiquity, acting in pursuance of these convictions, and making the benefit of their people their object in enforcing the belief of superior powers. The difference will appear to be this; that, among other nations, the divine worship was introduced for the sake of the civil polity; but that, by the institutions of Moses, the civil polity was established for the sake of preserving the faith,

It is probably true, that no civilized community has ever existed without a sense of religion. That those ancient kingdoms, at least, with which we are best acquainted, lived under a consciousness of some divine power and government, is fully proved by their frequent sacrifices and vows and festivals. The belief from which these practices proceed, is so forcibly natural, that it continues to operate in superstition, where it is too far depraved to excite devotion. But the constitution of the Hebrew polity is all along accompanied not