tions which the rest of mankind cherished in regard to a future state, or the authority of revelation, supposing the doctrine were contained in other inspired writings, which they acknowledged, besides the ordinances of their legal code. The extraordinary providence under which they lived could not justify the ways of God to man upon the ground of reason, as a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, for (it has been well remarked) though an extraordinary providence', it was not an equal providence, and under such a dispensation as the Mosaic (with reverence be it spoken) Omnipotence itself could not make it so. If the land suffered for its transgressions and became captive to its enemies, it is hardly possible to imagine that some innocent individuals should not have suffered with it. We read in the books of Moses, that when one particular person had committed the offence,

P Mr. Peters (p. 263.) observes, that an extraordinary providence does by no means include or infer an equal providence. Mr. Lancaster has very properly remarked on the egregious fallacy of Warburton in confounding the two ideas. Vide Mr. Lancaster's Harmony of the Law and the Gospel, p. 157.

the whole army and nation was punished for his sin, though ignorant of it. In like manner, subjects were punished for the disobedience of the king. Again, when the father offended, his innocent children and family were cut off with him; and, supposing they escaped the legal penalty, the loss of the father would itself be an infliction of evil on his kindred. The author of the Divine Legation has called circumstances like these, inequalities of events, and necessarily arising from an equal providence, as if by a change of phrase he could get rid of the fact, that under such a dispensation the innocent suffered with the guilty; and that it was even a necessary and appointed part of it for the crimes of the fathers to be visited upon the children. Yet, amid such inequalities, have we any reason to

q Warburton's Divine Legation, book v. sect. 4. vol. iii,

p. 121.

He attempts also most paradoxically to shew that the sacred writers, when they speak (more particularly in the Book of Psalms and Ecclesiastes) of the inequalities of Providence and the unfit distribution of things, allude to a dispensation existing among their pagan neighbours, and not in Judæa. Book v. sect. 4. vol. iii. p. 120.

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

r

̓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 ever3. 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 obe

$ 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 p. 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