powers of Paganism, is a circumftance I can by no means comprehend. The Jefuit missionaries, whofe human prudence no one will question, were quite of a contrary way of thinking; and brought a deferved cenfure upon themselves, for not fcrupling to propagate the faith of Chrift, by indulging to their Pagan converts a frequent ufe of idolatrous ceremonies. Upon the whole it appears to me, that the Chriftians were in no wife indebted to the Jewish religion, for the zeal with which they propagated the gospel amongst Jews as well as Gentiles; and that fuch a zeal as you describe, let its principle be what you pleafe, could never have been devised by any human under ftand standing, as a probable mean of promoting the progress of a reformation in religion; much less could it have been thought of, or adopted by a few ignorant and unconnected men. In expatiating upon this fubject you have taken an opportunity of remarking, that "the contempora"ries of Mofes and Joshua had "beheld with carelefs indifference "the most amazing miracles-and "that in contradiction to every "known principle of the human "mind, that fingular people (the Jews) feems to have yielded a stronger and more ready affent "to the traditions of their remote "ancestors, than to the evidence of "their own fenfes." This obfervation B 2 vation bears hard upon the veracity of the Jewish scriptures; and, was it true, would force us either to reject them, or to admit a position as extraordinary as a miracle itfelf; -that the testimony of others produced in the human mind, a ftronger degree of conviction concerning a matter of fact, than the teftimony of the senses themselves. -It happens however, in the prefent cafe, that we are under no neceffity of either rejecting the Jewish fcriptures, or of admitting fuch an abfurd pofition; for the fact is not true, that the contemporaries of Mofes and Joshua beheld with careless indifference, the miracles related in the Bible to have been performed in their favour. That That these miracles were not fufficient to awe the Ifraelites into an uniform obedience to the Theocracy, cannot be denied; but, whatever reasons may be thought best adapted to account for the propenfity of the Jews to idolatry, and their frequent defection from the worship of the one true God, a "ftubborn incredulity" cannot be admitted as one of them. To men, indeed, whofe underftandings have been enlightened by the Chriftian revelation, and enlarged by all the aids of human learning; who are under no temptations to idolatry from without, and whofe reason from within, would revolt at the idea of worshipping the infinite Author of the universe under B 3 under any created fymbol;-to men who are compelled, by the utmost exertion of their reason, to admit an irrefragable truth, what puzzles the first principles of all reafoning the eternal exiftence of an uncaufed Being;-and who are conscious, that they cannot give a full account of any one phænomenon in nature, from the rotation of the great orbs of the universe to the germination of a blade of grafs, without having recourfe to him, as the primary incomprehenfible cause of it; and who from feeing him every where, have, by a strange fatality, (converting an excess of evidence into a principle of difbelief) at times doubted concerning his exiftence any where, |