almost incapable of refifting those delicious prerogatives wherewith their great prophet and lawgiver had invested them; it would not have been poffible that the Mahometan religion could have exifted for fo many centuries. It is true, Mahomet's doctrines have kept his followers out of those grofs fcenes of idolatry, into which the ancient Gentile world was plunged; and even, in many places, drawn multitudes of people out of those abominable practices, to the knowledge of one God, and fo far, out of evil, fome good has arisen: but, as this has been done by acts of violence and terror, and not by perfuafion and conviction, and rather to gratify the ambition of this pretended prophet, and the ambitious views of fome of his principal followers, than from any defire to promote the good and happiness of their fellow-creatures, they can claim no merit therefrom; but we are to regard them as perfons who, in confequence of their free agency, intended to do evil; but nevertheless, the divine Providence has fo ordered it, that their wicked defigns have been productive of fome good.

When we confider, on the other hand, the mighty works which Mofes did in Egypt, and among the Ifraelites, of which, confidering the allegorical manner of writing in those days, he has given us a history that appears to be clear, fimple, uncontroverted, and void of all that pomp and felffufficiency, with which we find the writings of fome of the ancient, and of many of the modern philofophers filled: Moreover we find in this history,

and indeed in the whole character of Mofes, fuch a zeal to promote the good of his people, and to establish the worship of the great God of Heaven among them, at the risk of every thing which he regarded upon earth, and even of his life, which was frequently in apparent danger for this purpose; and all this without any defire of recompence, but that which would be the confequence of having been the inftrument whereby the Supreme Being promoted his great defigns, confiftent with the freedom of mankind as intelligent beings;-I fay, when we take all this in view, together with the meeknefs and forgiving difpofition of this great lawgiver, no part of which has ever been denied by any of the learned authors of antiquity, I think we cannot well hefitate to fay, that he must have been a man infpired by God, and that his laws and doctrines were well calculated, at that time, to pave the way for drawing mankind out of those scenes of idolatry into which they were then plunged.

Many fevere reflections have been thrown out against Mofes, by fome of our modern philofophers, for declaring that, when God fent him and Aaron to Pharaoh, to ask permiffion for the Ifraelites to depart out of Egypt, he at the fame time told them, that he would harden Pharaoh's heart, fo that he would not permit the Hebrews to depart; to the end that he might fhew his miraculous power among the Egyptians; and alfo for declaring that God had ordered him, and the Ifraelites, to destroy all the inhabitants of Ca

Daan,

naan, both men, women, and children, and not to let any escape: For, fay thefe philofophers, as the Supreme Being faw that the Egyptians, as well as the inhabitants of Canaan, were, at that time, in a ftate of the moft abominable wickedness and idolatry, if he meant to reclaim them, his word was fufficient to turn their hearts in a moment, that they might fee their errors, and adore their Creator; and not, like a merciless tyrant, to cut them off from the face of the earth; or by changing the orders of nature, to work miracles before them, which after all anfwered no purpose.

The voice of nature and of reason, as well as that of revelation, teaches us, that we are free agents here on earth, and that the Supreme Being has planted in us that divine and immortal instinct, that celeftial voice called confcience, to be our fure guide, to point out to us, what is good, and what is bad; and, although our faculties are limited, has made us intelligent beings; but, at the fame time, has left us free in all our actions: If therefore we reject, or ftifle, that innate voice, appointed to be our guide and governor, and to make us, in some measure, like God himself, to be perfect judges of what is good, and of what is bad; and, by the violence and depravity of our paffions, fink ourselves into such a state of refined wickedness, as well as of a favage brutality, that even the wild beafts of the foreft, if they had faculties to comprehend it, would tremble to behold us, how are we to be reclaimed? As, by

1

our original institution, our actions are free; and, therefore, we can only form an idea of two ways to draw us out of this degenerate ftate; firft, by changing our nature entirely, and new forming us; or, fecondly, by reviving that innate voice of nature, which our degeneracy, and the violence of our paffions, had choaked, or enveloped, in confufion and depravity. This appears to have been exactly the fituation of the Egyptians, of the inhabitants of Canaan, and, in a great meafure, of the Ifraelites, when Mofes appeared among them; and this great prophet fells us, that the Supreme Being, feeing that those people were in this degenerate ftate, and that they had almost divefted themselves of the excellencies of human nature, began with thundering in their ears, and fhewing his miraculous powers among them, to roufe that divine and innate principle in their respective hearts, which they had almost fuffocated; and, thereby, as a juft and merciful God, to bring them again to a state of judging of their own wicked conduct, and how much they had offended their Creator and common father. But, when this means was not fufficient to draw thofe rebels out of their rebellious and depraved fituation, from paying that adoration to stocks. and ftones, and to the works of men's hands, which they owed only to their Creator, and from making their bodies, which he had stamped after his own image, and invested with the prerogatives of intelligent beings, more bafe and fervile than

the

the worms which creep upon the earth, according to the ideas which our limited faculties are capable of forming of those matters, no other method remained, confiftent with the freedom of human nature, but to cut them off from the earth, as corrupt and poisonous plants, that were capable of infecting the reft of the creation. This was the plan which Mofes pursued, and I fee no manner of reason whereby we can justly arraign his conduct, notwithstanding all that our modern philosophers have said to the contrary.

This great prophet, after having proved his divine authority by the mighty works which he did, and left no manner of doubt among the people of Ifrael, and even among many of the Egyptians, of his being fent from God, to draw the former out of the wretched state in which they were enveloped, held in one hand the laws, and the form of worship which they were to offer up to the God of heaven; at the same time promising the Ifraelites pardon for all their past offences, if they would be obedient, and fubmit to the laws and orders of God; and, in the other hand, fire and fword, to destroy all those who rebelled against them. It does not appear to us what prophets, or preachers, were fent before among the inhabitants of Canaan, to lay before them the wicked and detestable state into which they were fallen, and to exhort them to repent, and to call upon the name of the Lord, before they were destroyed, except in the examples of Abraham and Lot, who

foretold