If the purpose of God, in sending Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with their descendants, into various countries, was, that they might check the progress of idolatry in those countries, and propagate the true patriarchal religion, it is obvious that such a purpose could not be served by detaining them longer in Egypt, where, far from converting the natives, they had themselves imbibed the most monstrous of their superstitions. The time, therefore, being now come, at which it had been foretold to Abraham, that his seed should cease to sojourn in a strange land, and that God would avenge them of those who, in that land, had so long oppressed them, Moses, after being the instrument of executing the Divine judgments against the very gods of Egypt, brought them out with a high hand, when Jehovah was graciously pleased to constitute them an independent nation, and to take on himself the supreme civil, as well as religious, government of that nation.

This appears indisputable from the nineteenth and five subsequent chapters of the book of Exodus, in which we find, besides the ten commandments that were pronounced from the top of Mount Sinai, many laws that were merely civil, and calculated only to promote the peace and prosperity of the people, after they should be settled in the land of Canaan. The government of the Israelites was, therefore, in the most proper sense of the words, a THEOCRACY, in which God was the Sovereign, and Moses, during his life, the Viceroy; but neither the

viceroy nor the people, nor both united, could make a new law, nor repeal an old one, even in matters merely temporal.

To this form of government, the people repeatedly gave their unanimous consent; and as they seem to have been left at liberty to accept it or not, it is perhaps the only instance recorded in Scripture, in which God condescended to enter, in the proper sense of the English word, into covenant with man. By implication, he gave to Adam the promise of eternal life, on the condition of his observing one positive precept; when that promised gift was forfeited, he was graciously pleased to declare, that it should be restored through the seed of the woman; when he called Abraham from his idolatrous countrymen, he promised that his descendants should become a great nation, and that "all the families of the earth should be blessed in him ;" but here he says, "IF ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto me above all other people; for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. And all the people answered together, and said,—All that the Lord hath spoken we will do ;" after which "Moses wrote all the words of the Lord, and rose up early in the morning, and builded an altar under the hill" (Sinai,) " and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the children of Israel, who offered burnt-offerings, and sacrificed peace-offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of

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the blood and put it into basons; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the people; and they said,-All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.” *

This was undoubtedly a covenant in the proper sense of the word; and it was sealed with the sacred solemnities then in use on the greatest occasions; but let it be observed, that it was a covenant in which none but the Israelites were included; that the promises held out in it, if literally understood, were mere temporal prosperity, such as long life, great wealth, and a numerous offspring; and the threatenings, of only temporal calamities; and that it was altogether different from the paradisaical dispensation, with which it is often erroneously combined, and then called the covenant of works. So far from comprehending the whole human race, the Mosaic covenant had, for one of its objects, the keeping of the Israelites a distinct people, completely separated from the idolatrous nations around them; and that this might be done the more effectually, the Creator of Heaven and Earth condescended to become not only their peculiar tutelary God, but even their civil Sovereign, that the church and state might be incorporated

*Exodus, xix. 5, 6, 7; xxiv. 4-9.

into one society. The only revealed dispensations that have comprehended the whole human race, were that which was vouchsafed to Adam on his introduction into the garden of Eden; and that which, after his fall, was obscurely revealed in the sentence pronounced on the arch deceiver; and the ultimate object of all other dispensations have been, to prepare mankind for the reception of the glorious Gospel, of which the promise, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, was the first, though dark, intimation.

LETTER XI.

THE ULTIMATE OBJECT OF THE MOSAIC DISPENSATION, OF THE THEOCRATIC GOVERNMENT OF THE ISRAELITES, AND OF THE DISPERSION OF THAT PEOPLE AMONG THE NATIONS OF THE EAST, WAS TO PREPARE THE WORLD FOR THE ADVENT OF THE MESSIAH.

THE government of the Israelites being theocratic, it follows, that obedience to every civil institution of their lawgiver was a religious duty, and that disobedience to every religious institution was a crime against the state. To worship, or acknowledge any other God than Jehovah, was such a crime as we now call high treason; to neglect the performance of a kind office to any Israelite, whether friend or foe, as, for instance, not to bring to him his ox or his ass, that might be met going astray, would have been to act not merely ungenerously, but to sin against religion; and even to "seethe a kid in his mother's milk,"* unimportant as such a

*See Patrick on Exod. xxiii. 19.