written law, as they say, he repeated to Aaron, Elea. zer, and the sanhedrim, all that secret instruction which he had received in the night from God, which it was not lawful for him to write; and he committed the whole especially to Joshua. Joshua did the same to Eleazer; as he also did to his son Phineas; after whom they give us a catalogue of several prophets that lived in the ensuing generations whom they employ in 'this service.

The last person, who, according to them, preserved the oral law absolutely pure, was that Simeon, whom they call the just,' mentioned by Jesus, the son of Syrach; chap. i. And it is very observable, that the latter Jews have left out Simeon, the son of Hillel, whom their ancient masters placed upon the roll of the preservers of this treasure, supposing he might be that Simeon who in his old age received our Savior in his arms, when he was presented in the temple, Luke ii, 25; a crime sufficient, among them, to brand him with perpetual ignominy. How happy were it, if they alone were concerned in "turning men's glory "into shame!"

§7. After the destruction of the temple and city, when the evil husbandmen were slain, and the vineyard of the Lord let out to others, the kingdom given to another nation, and therewith the covenant sanctified use of the scripture; the remaining Jews having wholly lost the mind of God therein, betook themselves vigorously to their traditions. Awhile after (about two hundred years after the destruction of Jerusalem) Rabbi Judah, surnamed, the Prince and the Holy, took upon him to gather their scattered traditions, and cast them into some form and order, in

writing, that they might be to the Jews a rule of life and worship forever.*

This collection of his they call Mishna, or Mishnaioth, being, as is pretended, a repetition of the law in an exposition of it; whereas indeed it is a farrago of all sorts of traditions, true and false; with a monstrous mixture of lies and fables, useless, foolish, and wicked. The things contained in it are by themselves referred to five heads:

1. The oral law received by Moses on mount Sinai, preserved by the means before declared.

2. Oral constitution of Moses himself after he came down from the mount.

3. Constitutions and orders drawn, by various ways of arguing, out of the written law.

4. The answers and decrees of the sanhedrim, and other wise men in former ages.

5. Immemorial customs, whose original being unknown, are supposed, to be Divine.

The whole is divided into six parts, noted with the initial letter of the word which signifies the chief things treated of in it. To this Mishna of R. Judah they annex the Tasiphot, or additions of R. Chaiah,

* Maimon. in Jad Chazacha. The author of Sedar Olam, Tzemach, David, &c.

† As follows.

1. (1) Zeraim, seeds, divided into eleven Massichtot, or treatises, containing in all seventy-five chapters.

2. () Moad, appointed feasts, divided into twelve treatises, containing eighty-eight chapters.

3. (3) Nashim, of Women, distributed into seven treatises and seventy-one chapters.

4. (3) Nezikim, of Losses, divided into eight treatises and seventy-four chapters.

5. (p) Kodoshim, of Sanctifications, containing eleven books and ninety chapters.

6. (p) Teharoth, of Purifications, in twelve books and a hun» dred and twenty-six chapters.

his scholar, expounding many passages in his master's works; and to them, moreover, is subjoined a more full explanation of the Mishna, which they call Baracelot, being a collection of some anti-talmudical masters.

About three hundred years after the destruction of the temple, R. Johannan, composed the Jerusalem Talmud, consisting of expositions, comments, and disputes upon the whole Mishna, excepting the last part about purifications. An hundred years after that, or thereabouts, R. Ase composed the Babylonian Talmud, or Gemara; thirty-two years, they say, he spent in this work; yet leaving it unfinished; seventy-one years after, it was completed by his disciples. And the whole work of both these Talmuds may be referred to five heads:

1. They expound the text of the Mishna.

2. They decide questions of right and fact.

3. They report the disputations, traditions, and constitutions of the doctors that lived between them and the writing of the Mishna.

4. They give allegorical monstrous expositions of the scripture, which they call Midrashoth; and

5. They report stories of the like nature.

This, at length, is their oral law grown into; and, in the learning of these things consists the whole religion of the Jews; there being not the most absurd saying of any of their doctors in those huge heaps of folly and vanity, that they do not equal, nay, that they are not ready to prefer, to the written word; that perfect, and only guide of their church, whilst God was pleased with it. In the dust of this confusion, they dwell, "loving this darkness more than light, because their "deeds are evil." Having, for many generations, entertained a prejudicate imagination, that those traditional

figments, amongst which their crafty masters have inserted many filthy and blasphemous fables against our Lord Christ and his gospel, are of Divine authority! and having utterly lost the spiritual sense of the written word, they are by it sealed up in blindness and obdurateness; and shall be so until the veil be taken away, when the appointed time of their deliverance shall come.

§8. (II.) A brief discovery of the falseness of this fancy of their oral law, which is the foundation of all that huge building of lies and vanities that their Talmuds are composed of, shall put an end to this dis

course.

1. The very story of the giving of the law on mount Sinai sufficiently discovers the folly of this imagination. The Jews are ready, on all occasions, not only to prefer their pretended oral law to that which is written; but also openly profess, that without it, the other is of no use to them. I desire, then, to know, whence it is, that all the circumstances of giving and teaching the less necessary (as the written law is deemed) are so exactly recorded; but not one word is spoken of this oral law, either of God's revealing it to Moses, or of Moses teaching it to Joshua, or any others? Strange! that so much should be recorded of every circumstance of the less principal, lifeless law, and not one word of either substance or circumstance of the other. How know they, that any such law was given to Moses, as they pretend? What testimony, or record of it, was there made at the time of its giving, or for two thousand years afterwards?

2. Did their forefathers, at any time before the captivity, transgress the oral law, or did they not? If they say they did not, but kept it, we may then see, that the most strict observance of it could not preserve

them from all manner of wickedness. What a despicable fence must it have been to the written law! If they shall say that it was not kept, but broken by them; I desire to know whence it comes to pass, that, whereas God, by his prophets, doth reprove them for all their other sins, and in particular, for their contempt of his written law, the statutes, ordinances, and institutions of it, he no where once mentions their supposed greater guilt of despising the oral law; but there is as universal a silence concerning its transgression, as there is of its institution? Can we have any greater evidence of its being fictitious, than this; that whereas it is pretended it is their main rule of obedience, God never reproved them for the transgression of it; though, whilst he owned them as his church and people, he suffered none of their sins to pass unreproved, especially not any of equal importance with this upon their principle?

3. Moses was commanded to write the whole lawe that he received from God, which he accordingly did; Exod. xxiv, 3, 4; xxxiv, 28; Deut. xxxi, 9-24; but where was the oral law, which they say was not to be written, when Moses was commanded to write the whole law that he had received of God? This new law was not then coined, being, indeed, nothing but the product of their apostasy from the law which was written.

4. The sole ground and foundation of this oral law lies in the pretended imperfection of the written law. This is what they plead for the necessity of it; the written law extends not to all necessary cases that occur in religion, many things are redundant, many wanting, of which they gather numerous instances; so that they will grant, that if the written law had been perfect, there had been no need of this traditional one. But whom, in this matter, shall we believe, a 14

VOL. I.