suppose that the peculiar people of God, favoured as they were acknowledged to be, should have been deprived of those hopes of future recompense, in which every other nation under heaven, when oppressed with calamity, could find consolation? And strong as the sanctions of their temporal code might be as a motive of moral conduct, have we any probable grounds for supposing that the Almighty excluded from the breast of the Jew the fear of future retribution, which, in many secret offences to which the law cannot reach, provides a surer check than temporal evils or temporal death, and which, even under such a religion as paganism, had a powerful operation in deterring men from transgression: for we have the testimony of one of their own writers that it was the inordinate lusts and passions of men that made them atheists"? Nor is it necessary for us to explain why, if it were intended that the Jewish people should look forward to the good or evil of the future life, it was not made a part of

- Ακρατεία ἡδονῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν. Plato de Legibus, lib. x. Bentley's First Sermon on the Folly of Atheism.

the sanctions of their law. We cannot reason clearly on the purposes of the Almighty, who knows better than we do the comprehensiveness of his own designs, and the best method and the best time of accomplishing them: The secret things belong unto the Lord, but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for evers. Yet if we reflect upon the method which God had appointed, by which man was to be made partaker of eternal life, the propitiation of Christ and not his own merit or obedience, we may be led to understand why the promise of eternal life was not given in the law. Those who lived under such a system might in that case have supposed that the gift of eternal life was annexed as the deserved reward of obes Deut. xxix. 29.

t The apostle's answer will serve me; For if there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law, Gal. iii. 21. that is, if the genius of the law had produced such a dispensation as was proper to convey to mankind the free gift of life and immortality, this gift would have been conveyed by it. Warburton, vol. iii. book v. sect. 6. p. 163; vid. also 162. Mr. Lancaster's Harmony, preface, and p. 11.

and 12.

dience to the law; that the law was in itself perfect, and sufficient for man's justification, and not the shadow of good things to come, and the preparation of a system founded upon better promises. It is evident from the Epistles of St. Paul, that it was their confidence in the allsufficiency of legal ordinances which wrought so strongly on the ancient Jews in their obstinate rejection of the gospel; they believed that their scriptures held out the blessing of immortality as the destined portion of Israel; and they were persuaded, that, if not directly taught in the law, it was implied in it, and would be given to the faithful Israelite through the instrumentality of its sanctions alone. Supposing then eternal life had been the explicit promise of the Mosaic code, all these errors would have acquired tenfold strength; their bitter aversion to the gospel would in some degree have been built upon reason, rather than upon blind prejudice; and some of the most powerful arguments, urged by the apostle to overcome the obstinacy of his countrymen, would have lost much of their force

and propriety. And this reliance of their forefathers on the privileges of their law has been more than continued and confirmed in the breasts of the modern Jews. The perverted "ingenuity of rabbinical interpreters since the dispersion of Israel, superadded to the ancient traditions, has inspired them with the full conviction that eternal life is expressly revealed in the law; and to this, among other causes, may be ascribed the tenacious adherence with which the scattered remnant of the Jewish people still cling to the ancient dispensation *. If these reflections be well-founded, the notion of a double covenant and a twofold law proposed by Moses, as of positive enactment, the one his own national covenant with temporal promises, the other the Abrahamic covenant with eternal life, a theory which some eminent divines have adopted with a view of reconciling difficulties, would be in itself an improbable hypothesis; nor

u More especially of Maimonides, who lived in the 12th century.

× Vid. Mr. Lancaster's Supplementary Remarks, p.

373.

are the words upon which this idea is grounded sufficient to support the superstructure raised upon them.

From this general view of the question, it is time to appeal to the word of God, and to examine how far the promises and prophecies relative to the future redemption contained in the inspired writings, previous to the captivity, together with those sentiments and turns of expression which meet our eyes almost in every page, are consistent with the opinion that the peculiar people of God were shut out from the knowledge of a future state. In making this examination, we should be cautious of attributing too much weight to the inferences we are now enabled to draw, by means of the full revelation we enjoy, from passages whether in the law of Moses or in other parts of the Old Testament". The words that convey to our minds clear notions of a future state might not have appeared in the same light to the understanding of the ancient Jews.

y Vide some very just remarks in Dr. Whately's Essays on the peculiarities of Christianity, p. 49. on the passage cited by our Lord himself against the Sadducees.