"How

shall think fit to arbitrate.-Another has even ventured to ask, the Posterity, if it suffer for its own guilt, can be said to suffer for the transgressions of its Parents?" As this doubt arises from the Prophet's words, Your iniquity and the iniquities of your fathers together, &c. I think myself not concerned to satisfy it, till these Writers have more openly rejected the authority of the Prophets.

P. 8. HH. It is observable that by our own Constitution, no forfeitures attend capital condemnations in the Lord High Admiral's and Constable's Courts. And why? the reason is plain; those Judicatures proceed on the Roman, and not on the municipal laws of a feudal Government. Not but that the necessities of state frequently obliged other Governments which never had been feudal, to have recourse to an extemporaneous confiscation. Even Rome itself sometimes exercised the severity of this punishment, even before it fell under the feet of its Tyrants. Cicero, to excuse the confiscations decreed against Lepidus, which affected his children, the nephews of Brutus, says to this latter: "Nec vero me fugit quàm sit acerbum, parentium scelera filiorum pœnis lui. Sed hoc PRÆCLARE LEGIBUS COMPARATUM est, ut caritas liberorum amiciores parentes reipublicæ redderet." Ep. ad Brutum liber, Ep. 12. And again: "In qua videtur illud esse crudele, quod ad liberos, qui nihil meruerunt, pœna pervenit. SED ID ET ANTIQUUM EST, ET OMNIUM CIVITATUM." Ep. 15. Again, the same necessities of State have obliged Governments which had been originally feudal, but were so no longer, to retain this Law of forfeiture, essential to feudal Government even after all the feudal tenures had been abolished. But he, who would see the LAW OF FORFEITURES defended on the more general principles of natural justice and civil policy, may have full satisfaction, in the very elegant and masterly Discourse so intitled.

P. 9. II. Here Dr. Sykes, who so charitably takes the Deists' part, all the way, against the Author of the D. L. says, "It would have been well TO HAVE TOLD US what this doctrine was which was brought to light, and which held up these daring transgressors, and which continued them after death the objects of divine justice." Defence, p. 83. Can the Reader, when he casts his eye upon the text, and sees that I had told him, in so many words and letters, that it was a FUTURE STATE, think the grave Doctor in his senses? But this quotation from him will have its use. It will serve for a specimen and example of the miserable dispositions with which an Answerer by profession addresses himself to confute Writers who have taken some pains to consider their subject, and to express their meaning. He goes on objecting to this unknown doctrine. He asks "how this doctrine did these things?" That is, how the doctrine of a future state could extend beyond the present life? This shews at least, he was in earnest in his ignorance, and perfectly well assured that I had not told him what the doctrine was.

He proceeds with his interrogations, and asks, Why the punishing Children for their Fathers' faults had no further use after the bringing in a future state? I had told him long ago, it was because the punishment was employed only to supply the want of a future state. But to this, he replies,-nothing hindered its being added to the doctrine of a future state. It is very true: nor did any thing hinder temporal rewards from being added to the doctrine of a future state under the Gospel; yet when a future state was brought to light, by that Dispensation, both one and the other were abolished. But is it not a little strange that the Doctor, in thus insisting on its further use, on account of its being able to restrain more daring Spirits, by laying hold of their instincts, at all times, as well under an

unequal as under an equal providence, should not see he was arguing against the DIVINE WISDOM, who by the mouth of the Prophet declared it of no further use under the Gospel dispensation?

P. 10. KK. "Ezechielis sententias adeo sententiis Mosis repugnantes invenerunt Rabini, qui nobis illos (qui jam tantum extant) libros Prophetarum reliquerunt, ut fere deliberaverint, ejus librum inter canonicos non admittere, atque eundem plane abscondidissent, nisi quidam Chananias in se suscepisset ipsum explicare, quod tandem magno cum labore et studio (ut ibi narratur) aiunt ipsum fecisse, qua ratione autem non satis constat."Spinoza Tract. Theologico-Pol. p. 27, 28. In the mean time it may be worth observing, that the explanation which I have here offered, cuts off the only means the modern Jews have of accounting for their long Captivity upon the Principle of the LAW's being still in force. Limborch urges Orobio with the difficulty of accounting for their present dispersion any other way than for the national crime of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah; seeing they are so far from falling into Pagan idolatries, the crime which brought on their other Captivities, that they are remarkably tenacious of the Mosaic Rites. To which Orobio replies, "that they are not their own sins for which they now suffer, but the sins of their forefathers." Now Ezekiel has declared (and I have reconciled that declaration to the Law and the Prophets) that this mode of punishment hath been long abolished.

P. 10. LL. Having thus reconciled the two Prophets, Moses and Ezekiel, on this point, one may be allowed to wonder a little at the want of good faith even in M. Voltaire, when it comes to a certain extreme.

This celebrated Poet has, like an honest man, written in defence of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION and to inforce his argument has endeavoured (not indeed like a wise one, who should weigh his subject before he undertakes it), to prove, that all Religions in the world, but the Christian, have tolerated diversities of opinion. This common weakness of rounding one's System, for the support of a plain Right which requires no such finishing, hath led him into two of the strangest paradoxes that ever disgraced

common sense.

The one, that the Pagan Emperors did not persecute the Christian Faith: The other, that the Jewish Magistrate did not punish for Idolatry.

In support of the first, his bad faith is most conspicuous; in support of the latter, his bad logic.

If there be one truth in Antiquity better established than another, it is this, That the Pagan Emperors did persecute the Christians for their faith only; established, I say, both by the complaints of the Persecuted, and the acknowledgment of their Persecutors. But this being proved at large in the preface to this very Volume, it is enough to refer the Reader thither.

The other Paradox is much more pleasantly supported. He proves that the Mosaic Law did not denounce punishment on religious errors (though in direct words, it does so), nor did the Jewish Magistrate execute it (though we have several instances of the infliction recorded in their history). And what is the convincing argument he employs? It is this, The frequent defections of the Jewish People into Idolatry, in the early times of their apostasies. An argument hardly so good as this,-The Church of Rome did not persecute, as appears from that general defection from it, in the sixteenth Century. I say, Mr. Voltaire's argument is hardly so good as my illustration of it, since the defection from the Church of Rome still continues, and the Jewish defections into Idolatries were soon at an end.

But we are not to think, this Paradox was advanced for nothing, that is,

for the sake of its own singular boldness (a motive generally sufficient to set reason at defiance), nor even for the support of his general question. It was apparently advanced to get the easier at his darling subject, THE ABUSE OF THE MOSAIC RELIGION, that Marotte of our party-coloured Philosopher. Take this instance, which is all that a cursory note will be able to afford.

Mr. Voltaire, speaking of the rewards and punishments of the Jewish Dispensation, expresses himself in this manner, "Tout etait temporel; et c'est la preuve que le savant Evêque Warburton apporte pour démontrer que la Loi des Juifs était divine; parce que Dieu même étant leur Roi, rendant justice immédiatement apres la transgression ou l'obéissance, n'avoit pas besoin de leur révéler une Doctrine qu'il réservait au tems, où'il ne gouvernerait plus son peuple. Ceux qui par ignorance prétendent que Moyse enseignait l'immortalité de l'ame, ôtent au Nouveau Testament un de ses plus grands avantages sur l'ancien :" * Would not any one now believe (who did not know Mr. Voltaire) that he quoted this argument as what he thought a good one, for the divinity of the Mosaic Religion? Nothing like it. It was only to find occasion to accuse the Old Testament of contradiction. For thus he goes on,-" Cependant malgré l'énoncé précis de cette Loi, malgré cette declaration expresse de Dieu, qu'il punirait jusqu'à la quatrième génération; Ezechiel annonce TOUT LE CONTRAIRE aux Juifs, et leur dit, que le Fils ne portera point l'iniquité de son pere: il va même jusqu'à faire dire à Dieu, qu'il leur avait donné des preceptes qui n'étaient pas bons."+

As for the precepts which were not good, the Reader will see that matter explained at large, as we go along. What I have to do with Mr. Voltaire at present, is to expostulate with him for his ill faith; that when he had borrowed my argument for the divinity of the Mosaic Mission from that mode of punishment, he would venture to invalidate it from an apparent contradiction between MOSES and EZEKIEL; when, in that very place of the Divine Legation which he refers to, he saw the two Prophets reconciled by an argument drawn from the true natures of two approximating Dispensations; an argument which not only removes the pretended contradiction (first insisted on by Spinosa, and, through many a dirty channel, derived, at length, to Mr. Voltaire), but likewise supports that very mark of divinity which I contend for.

But it is too late in the day to call in question the Religion or the good faith of this truly ingenious man. What I want, in this Discourse sur la Tolérance, is his CIVIL PRUDENCE. As an ANNALIST, he might, in his General History, calumniate the Jewish People just as his passions or his caprice inclined him: But when he had assumed the character of a DIVINE, to recommend Toleration to a Christian State, could he think to succeed by abusing Revelation? He seems indeed, to have set out under a sense of the necessity of a different conduct: But coming to his darling subject an abuse of the Jews, he could not, for his life, sustain the personage he had assumed, but breaks out again into all the virulence and injustice with which he persecuted this unhappy People in his General History; and of which the Reader will see a fair account, in the second volume, b. v. sect. 1. P. 11. MM. This is the precise character of the writings of the Old Testament. And this state of them (to observe it only by the way) is more than a thousand answers to the wild suspicions of those writers, who fancy that the Jews, since Christ, have corrupted their sacred Scriptures, to support their superstitions against the Gospel; and amongst other erasePage 132. † Page 133.

ments have struck out the Doctrine of life and immortality; which, say these Visionaries, was, till then, as plainly taught in the Old as in the New Testament: For had these supposed Impostors ever ventured on so bold a fraud as the adulterating their sacred Writings, we may be well assured their first attempt would have been to add the doctrine of a future state, had they not found it there, rather than to take it away if they had: since the omission of the doctrine is the strongest and most glaring evidence of the imperfection of the Law; and the insertion of it would have best supported what they now hold to be one of the most fundamental points of their Religion. But this is not a folly of yesterday. Irenæus tells us that certain ancient Heretics supported their wild fancies against Scripture, which was against them, by the same extravagant suspicion, that it had been interpolated and corrupted. Notwithstanding, I am far from thinking these Moderns borrowed it from them. They found it in our common Nature, which always goes the nearest way to work, to relieve itself.

P. 12. NN. We shall now understand the importance of a remark, which the late Translator of Josephus employs to prove the genuineness of a fragment or homily, given by him to that Historian: "There is one particular observation" (says he)" belonging to the contents of this fragment or homily, that seems to me to be DECRETORY, and to determine the question that some of this Jewish church, that used the Hebrew copy of the Old Testament, nay rather, that Josephus himself in particular was the author of it. The observation is this, that in the present address to the Greeks or Gentiles there are near forty references or allusions to texts of the New Testament; AND NOT ONE, TO ANY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT either in Hebrew or Greek; and this in a discourse concerning HADES; which yet is almost five times as often mentioned in the Old Testament as in the New. What can be the reason of this? But that the Jewish Church at Jerusalem used the Hebrew Bible alone, which those Greeks or Gentiles, to whom the address is here made, could not understand; and that our Josephus always and only used the same Hebrew Bible?" Mr. Whiston's Dissert. prefixed to his Transl. of Josephus, p. 105.-What can be the reason (says he) of this mystery? He unfolds it thus: The Jewish Church of Jerusalem used the Hebrew Bible alone, which those Greeks or Gentiles, to whom the address is here made, could not understand. So that because the Audience did not understand Hebrew, the Preacher could not quote the texts, he had occasion for, in Greek. But he supposes the Author could not quote the Greek, because it must needs have been that of the Septuagint; which the Jewish Church at Jerusalem would not use. Now admit there were no other Greek to be had, or allowed of, Can any man believe that if this Jewish Preacher would turn himself to the Gentiles, he could be such a bigot as to be afraid of quoting the Old Testament in a language they understood, because his Church used only the Original, which they understood not? Or if he had been such a bigot, Would he have dared to preach to the Gentiles at all? What then but the fondness for an hypothesis could make men ramble after such reasons, when so obvious an one lies just before them? Why did he this, do you ask? For this plain reason: His subject was a future state of reward and punishment, aid he had more sense than to seek for it where it was not to be found. Oh but HADES is almost five times as often mentioned in the Old Testament as in the New. Indeed! But the fragment is not about the word, but the thing. In the Old Testament it signified the receptacle of dead bodies; in the New, the receptacle of living souls. But though this learned writer can, without doubt, laugh at those who seek the Trinity in the Old Testament, yet he

can in good earnest go thither in search of a Future state. Yet this latter is not in any comparison so clearly hinted at as the other: and no wonder ; a Future state is circumscribed to the New Testament, as brought to light by the Gospel; but the doctrine of the Trinity is no where said to be so circumscribed.

P. 13. 00. To all this Dr. Stebbing has an Answer ready. "The History of the persecution under Antiochus" (says he) " is written by two Historians, namely, the Author of the first book of Maccabees, and the Author of the second. This last writer has recorded the profession of the Martyrs concerning their belief of the doctrine of the Resurrection; but the first has entirely omitted it: nor is there one word about a resurrection or future state to be found throughout his whole History, though it is certain it was now the national belief. So UNSAFE a thing is it to rely upon the MERE silence of historians, when they undertake to write a history not of doctrines but of the transactions of men." Exam. p. 116.

I will tell him of an unsafer thing: which is, venturing to draw parallel cases; as he has done here; for they may happen (as hath happened here) to be cases most unlike.

In a large and miscellaneous Volume, composed by various Writers of different times and states, and containing the Law, the Religion, and the History of the Jews, from Moses to the Captivity, neither the Doctrines of the resurrection nor a future state are ever once mentioned.

This is the Fact. And to obviate my inference from it," That the Jews, during that period, were unacquainted with the Doctrines," this able Divine opposes the two books of Maccabees, containing the story of one short period, when, it is confessed, these Doctrines were of national belief; in the first of which Books, there is no mention of the Doctrine, and in the second, a great deal: the reason both of the mention and of the silence being self-evident. It is recorded in the second book, where there is a detailed account of the Martyrs for the Jewish Faith: it is omitted in the first, where there is no account of any such thing.

Yet these are brought as parallel cases: Let us therefore do them all honour.

1. Several volumes of the sacred Canon contain a history of doctrines. The two books of Maccabees contain only a history of civil transactions. 2. None of the inspired Writers of the Canon before the Captivity ever once mentioned the Doctrines of a resurrection or a future state.

Of the two books of Maccabees, one of them mentions the Doctrines fully and at large.

3. The sacred Canon comprises a vast period of time, and treats of an infinite variety of matters.

The two books of Maccabees are small tracts of an uniform subject, and contain only the story of one revolution in the Jewish State.

Unconscious, as should seem, of all this difference, the learned Doctor concludes So unsafe a thing it is to rely on the MERE SILENCE of Historians, when they undertake to write a history NOT OF DOCTRINES, but of the transactions of Men. In which, these THREE FALSEHOODS are very gravely and magisterially insinuated: That the Writers of the two books of Maccabees are equally silent with the Writers of the Canon: 2. That all the Writers of the Canon are writers of a History, not of the Doctrines, but merely of the civil transactions of men, equally with the writers of the two Books of Maccabees: And 3. That the thing relied on by me, is the MERE SILENCE of Historians. Which falsehood if the Reader does not see froin what has been said above, he may be pleased to consider, that mere silence is