them within those limits: such as the stated division of the land to each tribe; the prohibition of the use of horses; the distinction of meats into clean and unclean: the yearly visit of each individual to Jerusalem, with many others. The poet, who appears throughout his whole history to be a much better mussulman than a Christian, was surely, when he said this, in some pious meditation on the ALCORAN; which indeed, by the inevitable consequence of its legislation, must either set the Saracens upon enslaving all mankind, or all mankind on extirpating so pernicious a crew of miscreants.

But the Jews, he tells us, were COMMANDED to hold all other people in abhorrence. If he had said, to hold their IDOLATRIES in abhorrence, he had said true; but that was saying nothing. To tell the world that the Jews were commanded to hold the PERSONS of idolaters in abhorrence, was done like a poet.

For

But when he goes on to say, that The Jews found, BY THE VERY CONSTITUTION OF THE LAW ITSELF, that they were the NATURAL ENEMIES of all mankind, this was not like a poet, being indeed a transgression of the PROBABLE; for by the constitution of the law itself, every Jew that could read, found all mankind to be his BRETHREN. Moses, to prevent any such estrangement, which some other parts of his institution, if abused, might occasion, was careful to acquaint the chosen family with the origin of the human race, and of their descent from one man and woman; and, in order to impress this salutary truth more strongly on their minds, he draws out an exact genealogy from Adam, not only of the direct line which was to inhabit the land of Judea, but of all the collateral branches by which the whole earth was peopled.

So that were our poet to turn lawgiver, (which he might as well do, as GENERAL HISTORIAN) and sit down to contrive a method by which brotherly love and affection might be best established amongst the sons of men, one might defy him, with all his poetical or historical invention, to hit upon any more efficacious than that which Moses has here employed. St Paul, when he would enlarge the affections of the Athenians (to whom all other nations, as well as the Jews, were become BARBARIANS) to that extent which Christian benevolence requires, employed no other topic than this, that GOD HAD MADE OF ONE BLOOD ALL NATIONS OF MEN: and from thence inferred, that they all stand in the relation of BRETHREN to one another.

But it may be asked, What are we then to think of that ODIUM HUMANI GENERIS, with which the ancient pagans charged the Jews? I have shown, in the first volume of this work, that there was not the least shadow from fact to support this calumny; and that it was merely an imaginary consequence, which they drew from the others' declared hate and abhorrence of the idols of paganism, and firm adherence to the sole worship of the one true God. But besides this original, the principles and doctrine, there was another, the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic religion; either of them sufficient alone to perpetuate this wretched

calumny amongst ignorant and prejudiced men. That the doctrine was worthy of its original, the enemies of revelation confess; That the establishment of the ceremonies, as they were necessary to support the doctrine, were of no less importance, I shall now show our poet.

To separate one people from all others, in order to preserve the doctrine of the unity, was a just purpose.

No separation could be made but by a ceremonial law. No ceremonial law could be established for this purpose, but what must make the gentiles be esteemed unclean by the separated people.

The consequence of an estimated uncleanness, must be the avoiding it with horror: which, when observed by their enemies, would be maliciously represented to arise from this imaginary odium humani generis. What idea then must we needs entertain, I will not say of the religion, but of the common honesty of a modern writer, who, without the least knowledge of the Jewish nation or their policy, can repeat an old exploded calumny with the assurance of one who had discovered a newly acknowledged truth? But the pagans were decent when compared to this rude libertine. They never had the insolence to say, that this pretended hate of all mankind was COMMANDED BY THE LAW ITSELF. They had more sense as well as modesty. They reverenced the great Jewish lawgiver, who, they saw, by his account of the origin of the human race, had laid the strongest foundation amongst his people, of brotherly love to all men. A foundation, which not one of the most celebrated lawgivers of antiquity had either the wit to enforce, or the sagacity to discover.

Well, but if the Jews were indeed that DETESTABLE people which the poet Voltaire represents them to be, they were properly fitted however with a law, which, he assures us, was full as DETESTABLE. What pity is it that he did not know just so much of his Bible, however, as might serve to give some small countenance at least to his impieties! We might then have had the prophet to support the poet, where, speaking in the name of God, he says-I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they should not live*. But to leave this to his maturer projects; and go on with him, in his pious design of eradicating this devoted people; for he assures us, we see, that unless they be rooted out, their DETESTABLE POLICY will set them upon enslaving all mankind.

He hath shown the PEOPLE to be detestable, and their LAW to be detestable; and well has he provided for the reception of both, a most detestable COUNTRY. You may, if you please, suppose all this done in vindication of the good providence of the God of Israel; for a people so bad, certainly deserved neither a better government nor habitation. No, he had a nobler end than this; it was to give the lie to the legate of the God of Israel, who promised to them, in his Master's name, A land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands. Having gotten

Moses at this advantage, by the assistance of Servetus and his followers (for he always speaks from good authority) he draws this delightful picture of the HOLY LAND- "All of it which is situated towards the south, consists of DESERTS OF SALT SANDS on the side of the Mediterranean and Egypt; and of HORRID MOUNTAINS all the way to Esiongaber, towards the Red Sea. These sands, and these rocks, at present possessed by a few straggling Arabian robbers, were the ancient patrimony of the Jews."*

Now admitting this account to be true: 1. In the first place, we may inform our poet, that, from the face of a country lying desert, there is no safe judgment to be made of the degree of its fertility when well cultivated; especially of such a one as is here described, consisting of rugged mountains and sandy plains, which, without culture, indeed, produce nothing, but which, by human industry in a happy climate, may be made to vie with soils naturally the most prolific. 2. It appears, from the vast numbers which this country actually sustained in the most flourishing times of the theocracy, that it well answered the character their lawgiver had bestowed upon it, of a land flowing with milk and honey. 3. The Israelites, when they took possession of it, certainly found it to come up to the character which Moses had given them, of a place where they should find great and goodly cities which they had not builded, houses full of good things which they had not filled, wells digged which they had not digged, and vineyards and olive-trees which they had not planted. If, I say, they had not found it so, we should soon have heard of it, from the most turbulent and dissatisfied people upon earth. And it was no wonder they found it in this condition, since they had wrested it from the hands of a very numerous and luxurious people, who had carried arts and arms to some height, when they, in any sense, could be said to have cities fenced up to heaven. But the poet has a solution of this difficulty; for to the Israelites, just got out of their forty years' captivity in the wilderness, this miserable country must needs appear a paradise, in comparison of the deserts of Paran and Kadesh Barnea.‡ Now, it is very certain, that no desert thereabout, could be more horrid or forbidding than that of Judea, as the poet has here drawn the landscape. But does he think they had quite forgot the fertile plains of Egypt all this time? And if they compared the promised inheritance to the wilderness on the one hand, would they not be as apt to compare it to Egypt on the other? And what Judea gained by the first, it would lose by the second. But he will say, that generation which came out of Egypt, fell in the wilderness. What if they did?

**Tout ce qui est situé vers le midi consiste en deserts de sables salés du côté de la Mediterranée et de l'Egypte, et en montagnes affreuses jusqu' à Esiongaber vers la Mer Rouge. Ces sables et ces rochers, habités aujourd-hui par quelques Arabes voleurs, sont l'ancienne patrie des Juifs. Add. à l'Hist. Generale, p. 83.

+ Deut. vi. viii.

-Ce pais fut pour eux une terre delicieuse en comparaison des Déserts de Paran et de Cades-Barné. Ib.

they left their fondness for its flesh-pots behind them, as we are sufficiently informed from the excessive attachment of their posterity for Egyptian luxury of every kind. 4. But let us admit his account of the sterility of the promised land, and then see how the pretensions of the Mosaic mission will stand. We will consider this sterility in either view, as corrigible, or as incorrigible.

If corrigible, we cannot conceive a properer region for answering the ENDS of providence, as Moses has delivered them unto us, with regard to this people. The first great blessing bestowed on mankind, was to be particularly exemplified in the posterity of Abraham, which was to be like the sand on the sea-shore for multitude: and yet they were to be confined within the narrow limits of a single district: so that some proportionate provision was to be made for its numerous inhabitants. Affluence by commerce they could not have; for the purpose of their separation required that idolaters should no more be permitted to come and pollute them, than that they should go amongst idolaters to be polluted by them: And accordingly, a sufficient care was taken, in the framing of their laws, to hinder this communication at either end. Thus the advantages from commerce being quite cut off, they had only agriculture to have recourse to, for subsistence of their multitudes. And the natural sterility of the land would force them upon every invention to improve it. And artificial culture produces an abundance, which unassisted nature can never give to the most fruitful soil and most benignant climate. Add to this, that a people thus sequestered, would, without such constant attention to the art, and application to the labour, which the meliorating of a backward soil requires, soon degenerate into barbarous and savage manners; the first product of which has been always seen to be a total oblivion of a God.

But if we are to suppose what the poet would seem to insinuate, in discredit of the dispensation, that the soil of Judea was absolutely incorrigible; a more convincing proof cannot be given of that EXTRAORDINARY PROVIDENCE which Moses promised to them. So that if the corrigibility of a bad soil perfectly agreed with the END of the dispensation, which was a separation, the incorrigibility of it was as well fitted to the MEAN, which was an extraordinary providence. For the fact, that Judea did support those vast multitudes, being unquestionable, and the natural incapacity of the country so to do being allowed, nothing remains but that we must recur to that extraordinary providence, which not only was promised, but was the natural consequence of a theocratic form of government. But I am inclined to keep between the two contrary suppositions, and take up the premises of the one, and the conclusion of the other: to hold that the sterility of Judea was very corrigible; but that all possible culture would be inadequate to the vast numbers which it sustained, and that therefore its natural produce was still further multiplied by an extraordinary blessing upon the land.

To support this system, we may observe, that this extraordinary assistance was bestowed more eminently, because more wanted, while the Israelites remained in the wilderness. MOSES, whose word will yet go as far as our general historian's, says, that when God took Jacob up, to give him his LAW, he found him indeed in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; but it was no longer such, when now God had the leading of him. "He led him about," [i. e. while he was preparing him for the conquest of the promised land] "He instructed him," [i. e. by the LAW, which he there gave him] "He kept him as the apple of his eye," [i. e. he preserved him there by his extraordinary providence;] the effects of which he describes in the next words, "He made him ride on the high places of the earth," [i. e. he made the wilderness to equal, in its produce, the best cultivated places] "that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock: butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan" [i. e. as large as that breed] "and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat," [i. e. the flour of wheat] "and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape."

That this was no fairy scene, appears from the effects" Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked; thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation,"* &c. This severe reproof of Moses certainly did not put the Israelites in a humour, to take the wonders in the foregoing account on his word, had the facts he appeals to been the least equivocal.

On the whole, we can form no conception how God could have chosen a people, and assigned them a land to inhabit, more proper for the display of his almighty power, than the people of Israel and the land of Judea. As to the people, the PROPHET in his parable of the vine-tree, informs us, that they were, naturally, the weakest and most contemptible of all nations: and as to the land, the POET, in his great fable, which he calls a General History, assures us, that Judea was the vilest and most barren of all countries. Yet somehow or other this chosen people became the instructers of mankind, in the noblest office of humanity, the science of true theology: and the promised land, while made subservient to the worship of one God, was changed, from its native sterility, to a region flowing with milk and honey; and, by reason of the incredible numbers which it sustained, deservedly entitled the GLORY OF ALL LANDS.

This is the state of things which SCRIPTURE lays before us. And I have never yet seen those strong reasons, from the schools of infidelity, that should induce a man, bred up in any school at all, to prefer their logic to the plain facts of the sacred historians.

I have used their testimony to expose one, who, indeed, renounces their authority: but in this I am not conscious of having transgressed any rule of fair reasoning. The freethinker laments that there is no contemporary historian remaining, to confront with the Jewish lawgiver, and * Deut. xxxii. 10, et seq.