animal functions: and surely it is not without reason that Sir John Floyer, in his excellent treatise of Cold Baths, laments the disuse of immersion; affirming that the children of these latter ages are become degenerate and more sickly under the effeminate practice of sprinkling *. In the other Sacrament, bread and wine are assumed to signify an inward and spiritual grace; because in their daily acceptation they are of principal use for the sustaining of animal life. And even the divine institution of fasting is not less effectual for the disorders of the body than for those of the mind. By parity of reason, it may be supposed, that the same food, which was preferred for moral purposes, is in its nature the best adapted to preserve an healthy temperament of the blood and juices. There is this peculiarity in the Wisdom of God, that it attains several ends by the same means: whereas the views of men are narrow and contracted, and their counsels directed to a single point, without any certainty of reaching it. Physical considerations, therefore, may have their place: because they are so far from precluding a moral design in the Law-giver, that they may consist very well with it; while they serve also to open to us a more extensive prospect of the divine benignity.

IX. But of all the Disquisitors that ever took the Law of Moses in hand with an apparent serious design, none have erred more palpably than the learned Dr. Spencer; whose work, De Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus, would have been excellent indeed, had his Divinity been as sound as his Latinity is native and elegant.

The main pillars of his fabric are these two, 1. That

See p. 82, and 93, 94.

1

the Hebrews were a people pinguioris ingenii, of a gross apprehension, to whom God could never think of proposing any moral instruction under an allegorical form; and consequently that the whole Levitical Ritual was intended, as he himself expresses it, to exercise τον εξω ανθρωπον, the outward man*. 2. That as they were naturally addicted to Idolatry, the precepts of their Ritual were borrowed from the practices of Idolaters, and accommodated to the service of the true God: that so their inclination might be humoured, and at the same time their Apostacy prevented.

In these two principles there are almost as many absurdities as words: for one of them contradicts the other, and both are independently confuted by the Scripture. It was a method in the highest estimation with the heathens, and observed universally, to conceal their divine doctrines under the veil of some figurative forms of speech. The Egyptians were famed for their Hieroglyphics; the Pythagoreans for their Symbols; the Greeks and Romans had an extensive Mythology, under which the mysteries of their Re ligion were represented; and all the fables of antiquity shew what an opinion was entertained of allusion and imagery, for the improvement of the mind in the manners of human prudence. Maximus, in his Epistle prefixed to the works of Horapollo, hath well observed, that "the Egyptians had their adyta, and "Greeks and barbarians in general, when they de "livered down the truth, concealed the principles of things under ænigmas, symbols, allegories, metaphors,

* Vide Proleg. cap. i. Neque verisimile est Deum, cui cum pinguioris ingenii populo res erat, vitia ulla mysticè depingere vel hiereglyphicè prohibere voluisse. Lib. i. cap. v. iv.

" and such like figures." They were induced to this, as he informs us, by the three following considerations: 1. That their disciples might be accustomed to a short and sententious way † of expressing themselves; a similitude or metaphor exhibiting that sense at a single view, which is weak and dilute under the ordinary circumlocutions of language. 2. That the Science of Divinity might be kept from the profane vulgar, and deposited with students properly initiated; lest that which was too common should fall into profanation and contempt. 3. That the understanding, being sharpened by the difficulty of investigating a mythological meaning, might set the greater value upon the knowledge thus acquired. The adepts of Egypt were conducted to their sacred literature through the preparatory forms of writing called epistolographic; to which the next in order was the Hieratic, or the writing. used by the religious Scribes and Priests; and lastly they were admitted to the Hieroglyphic, which was the symbolical writing of their Divinity, and was thought the most perfect and important of all.

X. This of Maximus is a learned and rational account. We are now to compare it with Dr. Spencer's principles. The purport of his whole work is to shew, that the Heathen Ritual was the Original, and the Jewish Ritual was the Copy. But the Heathen Ritual was all mystery and allegory: how then can it be credible that the Jewish, if borrowed from it, should yet have no mystery at all? Did the perfec

Αιγύπλιοι δε και αυτοι δια των αδυίων παρ αυτων καλεμένων τελο σαφως εκδιδάσκεσι. Και όλως βαρβαροι τε αμα και Ελληνες τας των πραγμαίων αρχας αποκρυψάμενοι, αινιγμασι τε και συμβόλοις, αλλη[ορίαις τε και μεταφο gass, και τοιείοις τισι τρόποις παραδεδώκασι την αληθειαν.

* Προς βραχυλογίας ασκησιν.

tion of Egyptian wisdom consist in throwing a metaphorical veil over their precepts? and could it be the perfection of a Moses, educated in the School of Egypt, to deliver things according to the lowest literal mode of expression? Surely this could never be: and if not, Dr. Spencer's Scheme is a contradiction to itself.

But he objects, that the Jews were a people of a gross apprehension, unfit for all the refinements of allusion. Too many of them were so, and therefore took their Law for such a System as Dr. Spencer has made of it: in which they are not singular; for the Vulgar, whether Jews, Heathens, or Christians, have always miscarried by taking images for realities; and if I speak to the intelligent, I need not stay to prove it*. To say, as this learned man doth, that the Law was intended only for the outward man, is formally to contradict the New Testament: for then it would have followed, that he was truly a Jew who was such outwardly but saith the Apostle, he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart: which is no new doctrine, but agreeable only to what Moses had published before.

XI. By another mistake, Dr. Spencer has given the seniority to Heathenism: and to support it, shews from heathen authors, with much learning, that many Ritual Laws were common both to the Hebrews and the Heathens. Which is not to be wondered at, because if we go far enough backward, we come at length to one common fountain of Patriarchal Tradition. "There is one observation (says Dr. Shuck'ford) which, as far as I have had opportunity to apply it, will fully answer every particular that Dr.

See the xiiith Chapter of Monsieur Paschal's Thoughts,

"Spencer has offered; which is this, that he is able "to produce no one ceremony or usage practised "both in the Religion of Abraham or Moses and in "that of the Heathen nations, but that it may be "proved that it was used by Abraham or Moses, or by some of the true worshippers of God, earlier "than by any of the heathen nations *." Whoever examines the sacred history with attention, will discover that the principal Rites of the Levitical Law were in use before the time of Moses, that is, during the Patriarchal State of the Church: and I have seen a work of the last century in the Bodleian Library with the title of Led ante Legem. The subject is curious, and cannot be without its use if treated with judgment. With regard to this Law in particular concerning the distinction of animals the case is very plain; because it appears from the practice of Noah, that such a distinction had taken place before the Flood. Here Dr. Spencer is at his wit's end, being driven to the supposition or presumption, that beasts were called clean and unclean by anticipation †: but they were not only called so; for they were actually taken as such, and applied as such, as effectually as by the institution and practice of the Mosaic Law.

XII. It happens, however, that the reasonings of this learned writer lead him frequently astray from his principles, so as to render his work remarkably inconsistent. Thus, for example, he rejects with scorn the figurative sense of this Law, as a sort of light bread offensive to the taste of every intelligent Reader: unhappily alluding to that other figurative Diet, which the carnal Israelites rejected in the wil

* Shuckford's Connect. vol. i. p. 157.

Ut mundorum et immundorum animalium in historia diluvi; xala won mentionem fecisse videatur. Lib. i. cap. v. § v.