propagating it amongst all WHO WERE ABLE AND WILLING TO RECEIVE IT. p. 125. Illustrious distinguisher! Does not the BISHOP's industriously propagating it amongst all who are able and willing to receive it, imply the keeping it out of sight from the rest? And does not MY industriously keeping it out of sight from the rest, imply the propagating it amongst all who were able and willing to receive it? But, in this case, I have done more than by implication; I have said over and over again, that it was communicated to the few able to receive it. I did not indeed add willing. That discovery was reserved for the wonderful penetration of our Author. I had no conception but that every Jew was willing enough to receive not only the promise of the life that now is, but of that which is to come: but it is a reasonable question whether they were as able; and would not then have quitted both the school and school-master that was to bring them to Christ long before the good time he had appointed. But these are matters above our Author's comprehension. He will needs know why God acted thus mysteriously. I will tell him when he informs me (and perhaps before) why America for so many ages was debarred the light of the Gospel. Were not these his offspring as well as the sons of Abraham? But this is the advantage that he and his fellows take with the ignorant. They cry out, What! a religion from God without a future state? No. No. Rather than this, any thing. They will go a text-hunting, lie at catch for an ambiguity, divorce the sentence from its context, strip it naked; and if, after all this violence, it does but squint their way, see here, say they, as clear a proof of it as from the preaching of Jesus. Yet let these texts but speak for themselves, or without any other prompter than the context, and we shall soon see that there is not one of all they have ever produced, in the period in question, that can by any rules of good cri ticism be made to signify the least notice of a future state, otherwise than in a secondary and spiritual sense. In the mean time let no good man be scandalized with their clamour. All such shall soon see this tempest of malice and bigotry dispersed, and the Scripture of God at last vindicated even from its worst and most fatal mischief;

the virulence of false zeal. But this and bigotry have so blinded our Anonymous, that in another place he insultingly asks me, (p. 70) WHERE I learnt that death doth not now reign? and yet before he ends his page he himself quotes these words of the Apostle, Jesus Christ hath abolished death*.

de

2. But now, if the bringing over such kind of writers, and leading them into the dawn of sense, were any matter of merit, I had much to boast of. When I first adventured to fall upon their systems, nothing was heard amongst them but " that Moses did teach a future state; "and plainly too; if not, the worse for him; for he ought to have taught it." This was then the cry. But now their note is altered. This Anonymous owns very frankly that Moses taught no future state, nay more, could not teach it. Moses (says he) as an authorized teacher could not declare the doctrine of a future state. This doctrine was not in his commission. pp. 5 & 7. And so, in other places, to the same purpose. Thus, after having fought through all their own weapons in vain, they will now try if they cannot silence me with mine; and make that very principle on which I raised my second proposition serve to the subversion of it. For the reader must not fancy that they now begin to embrace any of my principles in the love of truth, but of contention only. But let us take him as we find him. He says, Moses had it not in commission to teach a future state. Be it so I ask then, first, how he comes to know this? If he says, because Moses did not teach it, he will argue as becomes him. But I will suppose him to say because it was reserved for the commission of Jesus. Then thus I argue That traditional knowledge, which this man says they had of the doctrine, was either a divine or human tradition. If he says, a divine, then some holy man had it in commission to teach before Moses, or God himself taught it. In either case, I ask why it could not have been intrusted to Moses, when instituting a new religion and civil government, since it was of a nature to be intrusted? If he will say, of human tradition, it is then certain Moses's silence, in a religion to which nothing was to be added, and from which nothing was to be taken, must have very

* 2 Tim. i. 10.

soon

soon erased all human traditions from the minds and memory of the people; which indeed was the case. Though human traditions, in after-ages, they had enough. And when I come to shew why they took them up, and whence they had them, that they had them not in the times in question will be seen to a demonstration. I only mention this, to shew the wretched futility of such a writer, who, when he steals a true principle, knows so little what to make of it. It is very true, This doctrine, was not in Moses's commission. And from this great truth I shall prove, to the shame of all such writers, that it could not be a national doctrine amongst the Jews in the times I mention. But this in my last volume. For I proceed very differently from these writers. They, from what they imagine, could not be, would prove it was not. I, from what I prove was not, shew afterwards what could not be. But he saw not this, that the people's not having the doctrine was a necessary consequence of Moses's not teaching it. And no wonder, when we consider how hẹ came by his principle, that he should understand none of its consequences. Hence it is that he so ignorantly accuses me of having confounded these two things throughout my book. That is, of taking advantage of, and, all the way, inforcing a necessary consequence from a certain principle.

But, one word more with him on this head. He says, Moses had it not in commission. What thinks he of the book of Job? He says he thinks of it very differently from me. It is prudently said, and enough to secure his credit, and keep him orthodox. We will for once support his modesty; and conceive him to hold, that the book was written by Moses; and that the famous text, in the nineteenth chapter, relates to the resurrection. But then what becomes of the principle of Moses's no commission? Or will he say Moses did not write it, and that the text in the nineteenth chapter does not relate to a resurrection? What then becomes of his orthodoxy? See now what it is to be sharking the principles of the profane. Common sense cries out against this unsanctiBed commerce,

Veto esse tale luminis commercium,

If the good man will believe me, he is out of his way. I would advise him to return again as fast as he can into the old Dunstable road of Moses and a future state for ever. This was only an intemperate fit of zeal that hurried him half seas over, before he knew where he was, or had time to look about him. For what is it he is doing? "Moses instituted the whole of an entire new religion: enjoins nothing to be added to, nor taken "from it: purposely omits the doctrine of a future state, "because it was not in his commission, but reserved for "the great Redeemer of mankind; and yet the people, "to whom he gave this religion, had the doctrine of a "future state as of national belief, all along from his "time, to the Captivity, though we can find no footsteps or traces of it in their history."

Credat JUDEUS Apella,

may, I believe, be given in answer to this man's creed with greater propriety than ever it was applied since Horace first used it. After this, Is such a writer to be argued with? To talk of a doctrine not being in the commission of a minister of God, because it was reserved for a future age; and yet that the people on whom his ministry was employed had all along this very doctrine, is a mockery both of God and man. For why was not Moses permitted to teach it, but because the knowledge of it was reserved for a future age? Or if they were then taught it, or had it, what hindered but Moses might have taught.

it? Be not acceived; as God is not mocked, so neither

does he mock his creatures. In short, this reasoning of my adversary is, verbis tollère, reponere, the reverse of the Epicurean: but perhaps he may like it the better for it, as 'tis paying those Jewish Epicureans, the Sadducees, in kind and with this class of Answerers the reverse of wrong is always right. But I am quite ashamed of my Anonymous. Let the reader only take notice, that this is the sole point now remaining in dispute between us.

3. As to the palmary argument, (of a future state-of rewards and punishments not being known to the Jews, or making part of their national doctrine from Moses to the Captivity) taken from the consideration of their whole history, as delivered in the Bible; which the reader has

an account of in this Review [p. 294]; our Answerer has not so much as attempted to touch upon it: though against him, who owns Aloses neither did, nor could teach a future state, it comes with a redoubled bound. Indeed at page 102, of his pamphlet, he has the courage to quote it in part, and still greater neither to pretend to answer it, nor to confess its force; but, to end all, he drops it in this manner-hy, truly. Sir, there is a difficulty in conceiving it; and yet were the case, as you have represented it, I should not venture to call it a DEMONSTRATION. Mere negative proofs are of all others most uncertain, &c. Venture! Why I see you dare not venture so much as to look it in the face. And what you may call it behind its back, will be but the railing of a baffled coward. No, your genius has directed you to a fitter task; and you go on to prove that the body of the Jews had the doctrine, from texts nothing relating to the matter, but such as have been forced into this service by Jews and system-makers-as, days of pilgrimage-being gather'd to their fathers-giving up the ghost--God's bringing every work into judgment-the righteous having hope in his death-David's hope being in God—his being a stranger and sojourner-And the joke of it is, he tells me I might have found out this meaning in then too, had I but consulted his commentators. And with this miserable récocta erambe his whole pamphlet is stuffed out from side to side.

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4. I had introduced my evidence, from the writers of the New Testament in this manner.." But what is of greatest weight, the inspired writers of the New Tes"tament expressly declare the same, They assure us that the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments did not make part of the Mosaic dispen"sation*." On which our Writer thus remarks; "The "Christian reader perhaps may be at a loss to know why "the testimony of the inspired writers of the New "Testament should be of greater weight in this case than the inspired writers of the Old. But what is worse, unbelievers (for whose conviction I presume your "demonstration is intended) may ask by what right the authors of the New Testament came to be admitted as Div. Leg. Book v. § vi, init. X 4

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" evidence,