the apostles, and in its traditions; but it is utterly disfigured in those who treat it injudiciously.

The Jews were of two classes, some were merely Pagan in their affections, while others were really Christian.

The Messiah, according to the carnal Jews, was to be a mighty temporal prince. According to carnal Christians, he is come to dispense with our loving God, and to give us sacraments which shall do every thing without us. This is no more the religion of Christians, than that was the religion of the Jews. The true Jews and true Christians agree in acknowledging a Messiah, who shall make them love God, and by that love shall make them triumph over their enemies.

The veil which is upon the scriptures, in respect to the carnal Jews, is there, likewise, in respect to wicked Christians, and all those who do not hate themselves. But how well are we disposed to understand them, and to become acquainted with Jesus Christ, when we are once made properly to abhor ourselves!

Carnal Jews fill the middle places between Christians and Pagans. The Pagans knew not God, and loved nothing but the world. The Jews knew the true God, and still loved nothing but the world. Christians know the true God, and love not the world: Jews and Pagans love the same world: Christians and Jews know the same God.

The Jews are a people visibly framed to be the standing witnesses of the Messiah. They preserve the Scriptures; they love them, and yet do not understand them. And all this has been foretold; for it is said, that the statutes of God should be delivered to them, but " as a book that is sealed."

So long as there were prophets to support the law, the people were negligent; but when the prophets ceased, the zeal of the people supplied their place; which is a providence too remarkable to be overlooked.

CHAPTER XI.

MOSES.

WHEN the creation of the world became a distant event, God provided a contemporary historian, and appointed a whole nation for the keepers of his history, in order that it might be the most authentic in the world, and that all mankind might hence be informed of a fact, which it was so necessary for them to know, and yet was impossible to be known in any other way.

Moses was a very able man. This is indisputable. Had he, therefore, written with a design to deceive, he would have done it in such a manner as not to be convicted of the deceit. He has, however, done just the reverse; for if what he delivered had been fabulous, there was not a single Jew but could have detected the imposture.

Why, for instance, does he make the lives of the first men so long, and their generations so few ? In a multitude of generations he might have sheltered himself from discovery; but in so few this was impracticable. For it is not the number of years, but the multitude of generations, which renders things obscure.

Truth is enfeebled only by the changes among men. Yet he places the two greatest events that were ever conceived, the creation and the deluge, so close together, that they touch, as it were, from

the few generations which he reckons between them. Insomuch, that at the time of his registering these things, the memory of them could not but be still fresh in the minds of all the Jewish nation.

Lamech had seen Adam; Shem had seen Lamech; Abraham, Shem; Jacob, Abraham; and Moses those who had seen Jacob. Therefore the creation and the deluge are indubitably true. This will be acknowledged as conclusive by certain persons, who will readily understand it.

The longevity of the Patriarchs, instead of contributing to the decay of past facts, served, on the contrary, to their preservation. For the reason why we are not often sufficiently instructed in the history of our ancestors is, because we have seldom lived with them, or because they died before we attained the age of reason. But when men lived to so great an age, children lived long with their parents, and had much opportunity of conversing with them; now what could have been the subject of their conversation, but the history of their progenitors; since this comprised all history whatever, and men were not then acquainted with the arts and sciences. which now take up so large a share in our discourse. And it is evident that the keeping exact genealogies was the peculiar care of those earlier times.

CHAPTER XII.

FIGURES.

THERE are some figures clear and demonstrative, and there are others which appear less natural, and prove nothing but to those who have been previously convinced. The latter resemble those of some men who build prophecies on the Revelations, which they expound according to their own fancy. But there is this difference between them, that they have no infallible predictions to support those which they introduce. So that they are guilty of the highest injustice when they pretend theirs to be as well grounded as some of ours; because they have not any others which are incontestible, as we have. The case therefore is by no means parallel. We are not to level and confound things which agree in one respect, when they are so vastly different in another.

Jesus Christ, prefigured by Joseph, the beloved of his father, and by him sent to visit his brethren, is the innocent person whom his brethren sold for twenty pieces of silver; and who, by this means, became their Lord, their Saviour, the Saviour of strangers, and of the whole world; which had not happened but for their plot of destroying him, making him an outcast, and selling him for a slave.

Joseph was an innocent man in prison between two criminals; Jesus on the cross between two thieves. Joseph foretels deliverance to one of his companions,

and death to the other from the same tokens; Jesus Christ saves one and leaves the other, after the same crimes. Joseph could only foretel; Jesus Christ performed what he foretold. Joseph requests the

person who should be delivered, to be mindful of him in his glory; the man saved by Jesus Christ, entreats he will remember him when he comes into his kingdom.

Grace is the figure of glory; for it is not the ultimate object. It was prefigured by the law, and it prefigures glory; but so that it is itself the way to arrive at glory.

The synagogue was not destroyed, because it was the figure of the church; and because it was only the figure, it fell into servitude. The figure subsisted till the arrival of the substance, that the church might always be visible, either in the representation or the reality.