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derness. Yet he hath asserted* its figurative sense as expressly as I have done, and hath even proved it by a text of the New Testament, which had never occurred in my own researches. With regard to its figurative use in separating the Jews from the Gentiles, he reasons thus-" Why should the Jews with "draw themselves so rigorously from the Company " of the heathens, unless they were enjoined so to do

by this law concerning the distinction of meats? "for whosoever shall diligently examine the Book of "Moses, will see that there is no other law which "clearly and expressly obliges the Jews to avoid all

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familiarity with foreign nations." In another place he suspects it was intended as an admonition to mental sanctification; and adds a learned and proper remark to confirm his suspicion. "God ordained this "distinction of meats, that the puerile nation of the "Hebrews might be led by an application of this law "to the first elements of sanctity and actual purity, "And this conjecture is founded upon the reason "God himself hath assigned for this institution; for "after he had delivered the law about separating the "clean animal from the unclean, he immediately "adds, be ye holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. "Which words St. Peter applies not to legal but to " evangelical sanctity, such as we should aspire to through the whole course of our lives. I must not "deny that the text of Leviticus, in the outward "Letter, requires only a sort of legal sanctity, ex"tending merely to corporeal purification:" (i. e. that the Letter of the Law is the Letter of it) "but it is agreeable to the umbratic nature of that Law, that we should believe those words to have contained a

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* Lib. i. cap. v. § iv.

more sacred meaning at the bottom, and to have. "directed the Jews to a sort of purity properly so "called, and conformable to that of the Divine Na"ture itself, under the figure of external purifica"tion." This passage affirms of the subject in general what I have endeavoured to shew of its several particulars for that which is true of the whole must be true of the parts. So that we have no opposition from the ingenious Dr. Spencer, but so far only as he is opposite to himself.

XIII. I think it must occur, after what hath been said, that the All-wise Creator had moral ends in view, as well as natural, in the formation of the World, and particularly in the establishment of the Brute Economy. Reason is a principle more sublime than Instinct; yet Reason may be greatly improved, and the benefit of Society may be as greatly advanced, by a proper attention to the various instincts of animals. As the Sluggard is reproved by the example of the provident and industrious Ant, other men may see other mistakes and failings rectified by the conduct of other animals; so that it may be said with propriety of them, as it was said of the AntConsider their ways and be wise. I think it is but just to assert, that this moral use of the animal Creation was originally intended in the formation of the World: because it would be a supposition unworthy of God, that the works of nature should be capable of answering any good end, which his wisdom did not foresee, and consequently design.

XIV. The manners of mankind, being derived more from Custom and Education than from Nature, are subject to vary with their circumstances, and are scarcely exempt even from the mutability of fashion itself. But brute animals are not free agents, because

they were not designed to be moral agents; for iorality, intellectual purity, and religious wisdom, are and must be by their nature the objects of choice. Brutes are therefore neither able to disguise their dispositions, nor to change the objects of their attention: on which account they are a never-failing source of instruction, holding out to mankind the same admonitions in every age of the world.

In respect of its certainty and immutability, Instinct is far superior to Reason: but man has this unquestionable superiority over the brutes, that he views them not brutishly, as they view him, but rationally: that is, with a sense of the infinite wisdom of their Maker, and with an application of their various properties to the improvement of the mind in Wisdom and Religion. He who looks upon brutes, as brutes look upon men, without learning any thing from them, loses this privilege of his Reason. And certainly, if God had moral views in the ordering of the world, it ought to be considered with a moral intention; which practice will lead us to a sort of Philosophy most worthy of a rational mind, the Candidate of an higher and invisible world. Naturalists may amuse themselves with counting the teeth of beasts, the scales of a snake, the threads of a flower, or the microscopical feathers upon the wing of a moth; and amaze the ignorant with a grand display of superficial Literature; which may serve excellently well for order and distinction, as the titles upon the drawers in the shop of the apothecary: but they see not the highest Wisdom of God in the Creation, till they discover the spiritual through the natural world, which no Glass but that of the Scripture will enable them to do. The Christian only can feel the force of those words-Lord! how manifold are thy works, in

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wisdom hast thou made them all! The more we examine things by the proper light, the more we shall be convinced that the Natural and Moral Systems of God are allied throughout to one another: and whatever may be suspected to the disparagement of REVELATION by the half learned unbeliever, whose Vanity hath put out the Eyes of his understanding, it will be found to have the attestation of all Nature. Every blast of Air that blows, every blade of Grass that springeth up from the ground, and every living Creature that moveth upon the face of the Earth, is, in some respect or other, subservient to the Philosophy of the Gospel. So that if any man would be a rational Infidel, he must find some other world to reason in this world is the school of Christianity.

XV. Whether the Heathens derived this article of their wisdom from Oriental Tradition, or whether it was the offspring of their own Reason and Contemplation, they certainly saw, in some measure, the moral use of the animal Creation; which is applied by the fables of Esop in particular so excellently well to the purposes of morality, that some have judged his productions but little short of inspiration*. They are without exception the best vehicles of moral instruction to young minds, more apt to be delighted with examples than abstractions; and I know not of any more valuable treasure that has descended to us from Pagan Antiquity. The Ancients were so attached to this figurative use of the animals, that the Egyptians in their Hieroglyphics assumed them as Characters to denote all the powers or depravities of the human mind, the excellencies of art and the errors

* ΑισωπΘ. δε δοκει μη πορρω θειοτέρας επιπνοίας των ηθικής διδασκαλίας auer. Max. Planud. in Vitâ Æsopi.

of ignorance, the policy of the wise and the simplicity of fools. They even filled the heaven itself with them, expressing thereby the nature of the Elements, and accommodating them to the celestial phænomena; placing the figure of the Crab at that point of the Zodiac, when the Sun, having attained the height of the Summer, begins to go backward again toward the winter; and the figure of the Capricorn, or mountain Goat, at the lower Tropic, where the Sun begins to climb upwards toward the northern hemisphere. The two Bears, inhabitants of the coldest Climates, are placed by the North Pole, over the regions of perpetual frost and snow; the Lion, the Egyptian Symbol of the Solar Light*, in that part of the Zodiae which corresponded formerly to the month of July, when the Heat of the Sun is most predominant: and the like propriety of expression might be traced in others of the celestial figures, which may seem to have been placed with no other design than that general one of parcelling out the Stars into intelligible tribes or classes. The fabulous origin given to them by some of the Greeks and Latins is altogether childish and ridiculous.

XVI. Here it is to be observed, that the heathens having erred in their notions of honour and excellence, some of their highest virtues having been no better than celebrated vices; they have on many occasions given the precedence to unclean animals, adorning even their Divinities with the skins of Beasts of Prey. The appetite for honour, as it signifies military glory, being attended with a thirst of

* Κεφαλην γαρ έχει μεγάλην το ζωον. Και τας μεν κόρας πυρώδεις, το δε προσωπων προγουλον. Και περι αύλο ακτινοειδεις τρίχας nala μίμησιν ηλις, οθεν και υπο τον θρόνον τε ωρες λεονίας υποτιθεασι, δεικνύντες το προς τον θεον τα ζων Conor. Horapoll. Hierogl. lib. i. cap. xvii.

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