patience, how comes it to pass, that the author, in the execution of this design, represents Job complaining, expostulating, and indulging himself in an ungovernable grief, rashly challenging God, and glorying in his own integrity? Could a painter, think you, in order to represent the ease and safety of navigation, draw a vessel getting with much pains and difficulty into harbour, after having lost all her lading and been miserably torn and shattered by a tempest? And yet you think a writer, in order to give a document of humility and patience, had sufficiently discharged his plan, if he made Job conclude resigned and submissive, though he had drawn him turbulent, impatient, and almost blasphemous throughout the whole piece. Secondly, it appears from the learned author's account of the conduct of the drama, that that which I have assigned for the sole scope of the book is the true. For if, in Job's distressful circumstances, the question concerning an equal or unequal providence were to be debated: his friends, if they held their former part, must needs doubt of his integrity; this doubt would naturally provoke Job's indignation; and, when it was persisted in, cause him to fly out into the intemperate excesses so well described by the learned doctor: yet conscious innocence would at length enable patience to do its office, and the conclusive argument for his integrity would be his resignation and submission.

The learned writer sums up the argument thus: Ex his, inquam, apparet, non primario agi in hoc libro de providentia, sive inæquali, sed de personali Jobi integritate. " From all this, I say, it appears, that the personal integrity of Job, and not the question concerning an equal or unequal providence, is the principal subject of the book." He had before only told us his opinion; and now, from his opinion, he says it appears. But the appearances, we see, are deceitful; and so they will always be, when they arise only out of the fancy or inclination of the critic, and not from the nature of things.

But he proceeds. Hanc enim (quod omnino observandum est) in dubium vocaverant amici, non ideo tantum quod afflictus esset, sed quod afflictus impatientius se gereret, Deique justitiæ obmurmuraret: et quis strenuus videlicet aliorum hortator fuerat ad fortitudinem et constantiam, quum ipse tentaretur, victus labasceret. "For that [i. e. his personal integrity] it was which his friends doubted of, not so much on account of his affliction, as for the not bearing his affliction with patience, but murmuring at the justice of God. And that he who was a strenuous adviser of others to fortitude and constancy, should, when his own trial came, sink under the trial of his disasters." But why not on account of his afflictions? Do not we find that even now, under this unequal distribution of things, censorious men (and such doubtless he will confess Job's comforters to have been) are but too apt to suspect great afflictions for the punishment of secret sins. How much more prone to the same suspicion would such men be in the time of Job, when the ways of providence were more equal? As to his impatience in bearing affliction, that symptom was altogether ambiguous, and might as likely denote want of fortitude as want of innocence; and proceed as well from the pain of an ulcerated body, as the anguish of a distracted conscience.

"Now

Well, our author has brought the patriarch thus far on his way, to expose his bad temper. From hence he accompanies him to his place of rest; which, as many an innocent man's is, he makes to be in a bad argument. Quam accesserat sanctissimi viri malis hæc gravissima omnium tentatio, ut tanquam improbus et hypocrita ab amicis damnaretur, et quod unicum ei supererat, conscientiæ suæ testimonio ac solatio, quantum ipsi potuerunt, privandus foret, quid misero faciendum erat? Amicos perfidiæ crudelitatis arguit: Deum integritatis suæ testem vindicemque appellat: quum autem nec Deus interveniret, ad innocentiam ejus vindicandam, nec remitterent quicquam amici de acerbis suis censuris, injustisque criminationibus, ad SUPREMUM ILLUD JUDICIUM provocat, in quo REDEMPTOREM sibi afluturum, Deumque a suis partibus staturum, summa cum fiducia se novisse affirmat. when," says the learned writer, "the most grievous trial of all was added to the other evils of this holy person; to be condemned by his friends as a profligate, and an hypocrite, and to be deprived, as much as in them lay, of his only remaining support, the testimony of a good conscience, what was left for the unhappy man to do? He accuses his friends of perfidy and cruelty; he calls upon God as the witness and avenger of his integrity: but when neither God interposed to vindicate his innocence, nor his friends forebore to urge their harsh censures and unjust accusations, he appeals to that LAST JUDGMENT, in which with the utmost confidence he affirms that he knew that his REDEEMER would be present to him, and that God would declare in his favour." To understand the force of this representation, we must have in mind this unquestionable truth; "that, be the subject of the book what it will, yet if the sacred writer bring in the persons of the drama disputing, he will take care that they talk with decorum, and to the purpose." Now we both agree that Job's friends had pretended at least to suspect his integrity. This suspicion it was Job's business to remove; and if the doctor's account of the subject be right, his only business. To this end he offers various arguments, which failing of their effect, he at last (as the doctor will have it) appeals to the SECOND COMING OF THE REDEEMER OF MANKIND. But was this likely to satisfy them? They demand a present solution of their doubts, and he sends them to a future judgment. Nor can our author say (though he would insinuate) that this was such a sort of appeal as disputants are sometimes forced to have recourse to, when they are run aground and have nothing more to offer: for Job, after this, proceeds in the dispute; and urges many other arguments with the utmost propriety. Indeed there is one way, and but one, to make the appeal pertinent: and that is, to suppose our author mistaken, when he said that "the personal integrity of Job, and not the question concerning an equal or unequal providence, was the main subject of the book:" and we may venture to suppose so, without much danger of doing him wrong: for, the doctrine of a future judgment affords a principle whereon to determine the question of an equal or unequal providence; but it leaves the personal integrity of Job just as it found it. But the learned author is so little solicitous for the pertinency of the argument, that he makes, as we shall now see, its impertinence to be one of the great supports of his system. For thus he concludes his argument. Jam vero si cardo controversiæ fuisset, utrum, salva Dei justitia, sancti in hac vita adfligi possent, hæc ipsa declarata litem finire debuerat. Sin autem de personali Jobi innocentia disceptetur, nil mirum quod veterem canere cantilenam, Jobumque ut fecerant, condemnare pergerent socii, quum Dei solius erat, qui corda hominum explorat, pro certo scire; an jure merito sibi Jobus hoc solamen attribueret, an falsam sibi fiduciam vanus arrogaret. "But now if the hinge of the controversy had turned on this, whether or no, consistently with God's justice, good men could be afflicted in this life, this declaration ought to have finished the debate: but if the question were concerning the personal innocence of Job, it was no wonder that they still sung their old song, and went on as they had begun, to condemn their much-afflicted friend; since it was in the power of God alone to explore the hearts of men, and to know for certain whether it was Job's piety that rightly applied a consolation, or whether it was his vanity that arrogated a false confidence to himself." This is a very pleasant way of coming to the sense of a disputed passage: not, as of old, by showing it supports the writer's argument, but by showing it supports the critic's hypothesis. I had taken it for granted that Job reasoned to the purpose, and therefore urged this argument against understanding him as speaking of the resurrection in the 19th chapter. "The disputants," say I, "are all equally embarrassed in adjusting the ways of providence. Job affirms that the good man is sometimes unhappy; the three friends pretend that he never can be so; because such a situation would reflect upon God's justice. Now the doctrine of a resurrection supposed to be urged by Job, cleared up all this embarrassment. If therefore his friends thought it true, it ended the dispute; if false, it lay upon them to confute it. Yet they do neither: they neither call it into question, nor allow it to be decisive. But without the least notice that any such thing had been urged, they go on as they began, to enforce their former arguments, and to confute that which they seem to understand was the only one Job had urged against them; viz. the consciousness of his own innocence."Now what says our learned critic to this? Why, he says, that if I be mistaken, and he be right in his account of the book of Job, the reason is plain why the three friends took no notice of Job's appeal to a resurrection; namely, because it deserved none. As to his being in the right, the reader, I suppose, will not be greatly solicitous, if it be one of the cousequences that the sacred reasoner is in the wrong. However, before we allow him to be right, it will be expected he should answer the following questions. If, as he says, the point in the book of Job was only his personal innocence, and this not, as I say, upon the PRINCIPLE of no innocent person being miserable; I would ask how it was possible that Job's friends and intimates should be so obstinately bent on pronouncing him guilty, the purity of whose former life and conversation they were so well acquainted with? If he will say, the disputants went upon that PRINCIPLE, I then ask how came Job's appeal to a resurrection not to silence his opposers? as it accounted for the justice of God in the present unequal distribution of things.

P. 396, Q. "This is one thing," says Job, "therefore I said it, HE DESTROYETH THE PERFECT WITH THE WICKED," chap. ix. 22; as much as to say, this is the point or general question between us, and I stick to the affirmative, and insist upon its truth. The words which follow are remarkable. It had been objected, that when the good man suffered, it was for a trial; to this Job replies: "If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent, ver. 23, suddenly, or indiscriminately," as Schultens rightly understands it; as much as to say, when the sword devours the innocent and the wicked man without distinction, if the innocent will distinguish his ill hap from the wicked man's, and call it a trial, the wicked man will mock at him; and indeed not without some show of reason.

P. 396, R. "Supposing," says the Cornish answerer, " we should allow such an equal providence to have been administered in Judea; yet, since he himself reckons it the utmost extravagance to suppose it any where else; what an idea does he give us of the talents of Ezra! who, according to him, has introduced persons who were no Jews debating a question so palpably absurd as that it NEVER entered into the head of any one man living to make a question of it out of the land of Judea! consequently could not with the least probability or propriety be handled by any but Jews. Is this like one who, he would make us to believe,

was a careful observer of decorum? certainly the rule of decorum would have obliged him reddere personæ, &c. as Horace speaks-either to look out for proper persons to debate his questions, or to fit his question to the persons." I should have reason to complain of this insolence of language, so habitual to these answerers, did it not always carry its own punishment along with it. For, look, in proportion to their rudeness, is generally their folly, or ill faith." Supposing," says this man, "we should allow such an equal providence," &c. Now, when the reader considers I am only contending for the actual administration of such a providence as the Bible, in almost every page, represents to have been administered, will he not naturally suppose this to be some infidel writer making a gracious concession even at the expense of his own cause? But when he is told that the writer is a minister of the gospel, will he not conclude that his head is turned with the rage of answering?

He tells his reader that I say, "That the debated question in the book of Job could NEVER enter into the head of any man living out of the land of Judea." Now, the very words from whence he pretends to deduce this proposition, convict him of imposture." This," say I, "could never have been made matter of dispute, FROM THE MOST EARLY SUPPOSED TIME OF JOB'S EXISTENCE EVEN TO OURS, in any place out of the land of Judea." Which surely implies it might have been a question then; or why did I restrain the case to the times since Job's existence? Was it for nothing? In fact I was well apprised (and saw the advantages I could derive from it) that the question might as reasonably have been debated at the time when Job lived, as at the time when, I supposed, the book of Job was written. But as this was a matter reserved for another place, I contented myself with the hint conveyed in this limitation, which just served to lay in my claim to the use I should hereafter have for it. The truth is, the state of God's providence in the most early supposed time of Job's existence is a subject I shall have occasion to consider at large in the last volume of this work, * where I employ it, amongst other proofs, to illustrate and confirm the conclusion of my general argument by one entire view of the harmony which reigns through all the various parts of the divine government as administered over man. Of this, my answerers have no conception. Their talents are only fitted to consider parts, and such talents best suit their business, which is to find fault. They will say, they were not obliged to wait. But who obliged them to write? And if they should wait longer, they will have no reason to complain: for the cloudy and imperfect conception they have of my argument as it now stands, is the most commodious situation for the carrying on their trade. However, whether they prefer the light of common sense to this darkness occasioned by the absence of it, or the friendly twilight of polemics to both, I shall not go out of my way to gratify their humour. I have said enough to expose this silly cavil of our Cornish critic, and to vindicate the knowledge of the writer of the book of Job, and his observance of decorum, in opening a beauty in the contrivance of this work, which these answerers were not aware of.

P. 397, S. The Use and Intent of Prophecy, &c. p. 208, 3d edit. - Grotius thinks the book was written for the consolation of the descendants of Esau, carried away in the Babylonish captivity; apparently, as the same writer observes, to avoid the absurdity arising from the supposition confuted above; and yet, as he farther observes, Grotius, in endeavouring to avoid one difficulty, has fallen into another. "For, suppose it writ," says the author of the Use and Intent of Prophecy, &c., "for the children of Esau: they were idolaters; and yet is there no allusion to their idolatry in all this book. And what ground is there to think they were so righteous as to deserve such an interpretation to be put upon their sufferings, as the book of Job puts on them, if so be it was written for their sakes? Or can it be imagined, that a book writ about the time supposed, for the use of an idolatrous nation, and odious to the Jews, could ever have been received into the Jewish canon?" - P. 208. These are strong objections, and will oblige us to place this opinion amongst the singularities of the excellent Grotius.

P. 567, Τ. "Here," says the Cornish critic, "take the poem in the other light, as an allegoric fiction, and what could it possibly afford besides a very odd amusement? for the truth of history is destroyed: and we have nothing in the room of it but a monstrous jumble of times and persons brought together, that were in reality separated from each other by the distance of a thousand or twelve hundred years. Had the author been able to produce but one precedent of this sort amongst the writings of the ancients, it might have afforded some countenance to this opinion: but, I believe, it would be difficult to find it." P. 47. What then, I beseech you, becomes of Solomon's Song, if you will not allow it to be a precedent of this sort? Here, in the opinion of the church, as appears by the insertion of it into the canon, or at least in the opinion of such churchmen as our critic, Solomon, under the cover of a love-tale, or amorous intrigue between him and an Egyptian lady, has represented Christ's union and marriage with the church. Surely, the patience or impatience of Job had a nearer relation in nature to the patience or impatience of the Jewish people, than Solomon's love intrigue had, in grace, to the salvation obtained by Jesus Christ. Yet this we are to deem no odd amusement for the WISE MAN. But for a prophet, to employ the

* That is, in book vii according to the author's plan. It never saw the light.

story of Job, to reprove the errors of the people committed to his care, and to inform them of an approaching change in their dispensation, is by no means to be endured. What! has this great critic never heard that amongst the writings of the ancients, there was a certain allegoric piece known by the name of The Judgment of Hercules, written by a Grecian SAGE, to excite the youth of his time to the pursuit of virtue, and to withstand the allurements of pleasure? HERCULES was as well known by history and tradition to the Greeks, as JOB was to the Jews. Did that polite people think this an odd amusement? Did they think the truth of history destroyed by it; and nothing left in its room but a monstrous jumble of times and persons, brought together, that were in reality separated from each other by the distance of a thousand or twelve hundred years? for so many at least there were between the age of Hercules and the young men of the time of Prodicus. Or does this Cornish critic imagine, that the sages of Greece took the allegory for history: or believed any more of a real rencontre between virtue, pleasure, and young Hercules, than Maimonides did of that solemn meeting of the devil and the sons of God before the throne of the Almighty?

But that curious remark of destroying the truth of history deserves a little farther canvassing. I suppose, when Jesus transferred the story of the prodigal and his sober brother to the gentiles and the Jews, and when St John transferred Babylon to Rome, in allegory, that they destroyed the truth of history. When ancient and modern dramatic writers take their subject from history, and make free with facts to adapt their plot to the nature of their poem, do they destroy the truth of history? Yet in their case there is only one barrier to this imaginary mischief, namely the drama: in the book of Job there are two, both the drama and the allegory. But after all, some hurt it may do, amongst readers of the size of this answerer, when they mistake the book of Job for a piece of biography, like the men Ben Jonson laughs at, who, for greater exactness, chose to read the history of England in Shakspeare's tragedies.

P. 400, U. But the Cornish critic, who has no conception that even a patient man may, on some occasions, break out into impatient heats, insists on the impropriety of Job's representing the Israelites of Ezra's time. "To represent the murmuring and impatient Jews," says he, "it seems that Ezra takes a person who was exemplary for the contrary quality and then, to adapt him to his purpose, makes him break out into such excesses of impatience as border on blasphemy." -P. 50. I doubt there is a small matter amiss in this fine observation. The author of the Divine Legation did not write the book of Job: therefore whatever discordancy there be between the tradition of his patience and the written history of him in this book, it is just the same, whether JOB or whether EZRA wrote it. After so illustrious a specimen of his critical acumen, he may lie in bed, and cry out with the old athlet,

Cæstum artemque repono.

However, he meant well, and intended that this supposed absurdity should fall upon the author of the Divine Legation, and not upon the canon of Scripture. In the mean time the truth is, there is no absurdity at all, but what lies in his own cloudy pericranium. Whether the traditionary Job represented the Israelites or not, it is certain, he might with much decorum represent them. And this the following words of the Divine Legation might have taught our critic, had he had but so much candour as to do justice to a stranger, whom he would needs make his enemy. -" It is remarkable that Job, from the beginning of his misfortunes to the coming of his three comforters, though greatly provoked by his wife, sinned not with his lips; but, persecuted by the malice and bitterness of his false friends, he began to lay so much stress on his innocence as even to accuse God of injustice. This was the very state of the Jews of this time; so exactly has the sacred writer conducted his allegory; they bore their straits and difficulties with temper till their enemies Sanballat, Tobiah, and the Arabians, gave them so much disturbance; and then they fell into indecent murmurs against God." But lest our answerer should again mistake this, for a defence of the author of the Divine Legation, and not of Ezra, let him try, if he can reconcile the traditional patience of Job with the several strokes of impatience in the written book, upon any other principle than this, that the most patient man alive may be provoked into starts of impatience by a miserable caviller, who, being set upon answering what he does not understand, represents falsely, interprets perversely, and, when he is unable to make the doctrine odious, endeavours to make the person so, who holds it. In conclusion, however, thus much is fit to be observed, that if the sole or main intention of the writer of the book of Job (be he whom he will) were to exhibit an example of patience, he has executed his design very ill; certainly in so perverse a manner that, from this book, the fame of Job's exemplary patience could never have arisen. Hence I conclude in favour of an hypothesis which solves this difficulty, by distinguishing between Job's traditional and written story. But now comes a Cornish critic, and makes this very circumstance, which I urged for the support of my hypothesis, an objection to it. Yet he had grounds for his observation, such as they were; he dreamed, for he could not be awake, that I had invented the circumstance, whereas I only found it.

P. 406, X. The different situations in which this folly operated in ancient and modern

times, is very observable. In the simplicity of the early ages, while men were at their ease, that general opinion, so congenial to the human mind, of a God and his moral government, was too strong ever to be brought in question. It was when they found themselves miserable and in distress, that they began to complain; to question the justice, or to deny the existence of a Deity: on the contrary, amongst us, disastrous times are the season of reflection, repentance, and reliance on providence. It is affluence and abundance which now give birth to a wanton sufficiency, never thoroughly gratified till it have thrown off all the restraints of religion.

I imagine it may not be difficult to account for so strange a contrariety in the manners

of men.

In the ancient world, the belief of a moral providence was amongst their most incontested principles. But concerning the nature and extent of this providence they had indeed very inadequate conceptions; being misled by the extraordinary manner in which the first exertions of it were manifested, to expect more instant and immediate protection than the nature of the dispensation afforded. So that these men being, in their own opinion, the most worthy object of providence's concern, whenever they became pressed by civil or domestic distresses, supposed all to be lost, and the world without a governor.

But in these modern ages of vice and refinement, when every blessing is abused, and, amongst the first, that greatest of all, LIBERTY, each improvement of the mind, as well as each accommodation of the body, is perverted into a species of luxury; exercised and employed for amusement, to gratify the fancy or the appetites, as each, in their turn, happens to influence the will. Hence even the FIRST PHILOSOPHY, the science of nature itself, bows to this general abuse. It is made to act against its own ordinances, and to support those impieties it was authorized to suppress. - But now, when calamity, distress, and all the evils of those abused blessings have, by their severe but wholesome discipline, restored recollection and vigour to the relaxed and dissipated mind, the dictates of nature are again attended to: the impious principles of false science, and the false conclusions of the true, are shaken oti as a hideous dream; and the abused victim of his vanity and his pleasure flies for refuge to that only asylum of humanity, RELIGION.

P. 406, Y. Thus both Sacro and Sacer have, in Latin, contrary significations. The reason is evident. Some things were consecrated and some devoted to the gods: those were holy; these execrable. So God being invoked sometimes to bless, and sometimes to curse, the invocation was expressed by one word, which had contrary senses. And this agreeable to the genius of language in general.

P. 408, Z. The Cornish critic says-" Above all, and to support the allegory in its most concerning circumstances, as the Jews were obliged to put away their idolatrous wives, so Job should have put away his, in the upshot of the fable. This would CERTAINLY have been done, had such an allegory been intended as Mr W. supposes." P. 66. Let this man alone for his distributive justice. I thought, when, in the conclusion of the book, we have a detailed account of Job's whole family, his sons, his daughters, and his cattle, and that we hear nothing of his wife (and, I ween, she would have been heard of had she been there), the writer plainly enough insinuated that Job had some how or other got rid of this affliction, with the rest. But nothing else will serve our righter of wrongs but a formal bill of divorce. Indeed I suspect, a light expression I chanced to make use of, gave birth to this ingenious objection.-See above, p. 405.

P. 415, A A. Divine wisdom procures many ends by one and the same mean; so here, besides this use, of throwing the reader's attention entirely on the serpent, it had another, viz, to make the serpent, which was of the most sacred and venerable regard in the mysterious religion of Egypt, the object of the Israelites' utter abhorrence and detestation.

Р. 420, В В. To this Dr Grey says, that the three friends likewise accuse Job of his present faults. Well, and what then? Does this acquit them of injustice for falsely charging him with preceding ones?

P. 423, C C. Indeed, had the book of Job the high antiquity which the common system supposes, the contending at the same time for the spiritual sense of this text, would be followed with insuperable difficulties: but these, let the supporters of that system look to. The very learned author of the argument of the Divine Legation fairly stated, &c. hath set these difficulties in a light which, I think, shows them to be insuperable; "those men," says this excellent writer, "who maintain this system, [of the high antiquity of the book, and the spiritual sense of the text] must needs regard the text to be direct and literal, not typical or figurative, but then this difficulty occurs, how came MOSES (if he was the author) to be so clear in the book of Job, and so obscure in the Pentateuch? Plain expression and typical adumbration are the contrary of one another. They could not loth be fit for the same people, at the same time. If they were a spiritualized people, they had no need of carnal covers, such as types; and if they were a carnal-minded people, the light of spiritual things would only serve to dazzle, not to aid their sight.

"Nor is the matter mended, but made worse, by supposing the book to be written by JOB