disapprobation. In this, however, he is completely answered by *Witsius: and with respect to the circumstance of resem blance between the Jewish religion and those of the ancient heathen nations, on which the reasoning of this author through the entire of his voluminous work is founded, Shuckford asserts, that so far is it from justifying the inference which he has drawn, namely, that God had instituted the one in imitation of the other, that the direct contrary is the legitimate conclusion: inasmuch as " no one ceremony can be produced, common to the religion of Abraham or Moses, and to 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." (Connexion, &c. vol. i. p. 317.)

It is to be remarked, that to those who have been already named, as supporting the hypothesis of the human invention of sacrifice, are to be added, in general, the writers of the popish church; who, in order to justify their will-worship, or appointment of religious rites without divine institution, allege the example of the patriarchs in the case of sacrifices, and the approbation bestowed by God upon these acts of worship, though destitute of the sanctions of his command.

One writer of that church, (a writer, however, whom she will not be very ambitious to claim) has indeed carried this point yet farther: inasmuch as he contends not only for the human invention of sacrifice, but for its mere human adoption into the Jewish ritual without any divine sanction or authority whatever. The words of this writer, which I confess I think worth quoting, merely for the same reason for which the Spartan father exhibited his drunken Helot, are these."That the Supreme Being would imperiously require of mankind bloody victims, and even point out the particular animals that were to be immolated upon his altar, it is, to me, highly incredible; but that superstition, the child of ignorance and fear, should think of offering such sacrifices, it is not at all wonderful: nor need we think it strange, that Moses, although a wise legislator, in this indulged the humour

ly, the oblation under the prescription of the Levitical ritual is intended to be conveyed; and indeed the word 1p is the most general name for the sacrifices under the Mosaic law. See what is said on this word in Number LXII-The true and obvious reason why the writer to the Hebrews uses the term Suga, is, because it is the very term employed by the Seventy in describing the offerings of both Cain and Abel in Gen. iv. 4, 5. The author of the epistle treating of the same subject, naturally uses the same language.

Misc. Sac. lib. ii. diss. i § 2-7. See also Heideg. Hist. Patriarch, Exercit. iii. § 52. tom. i.

of so gross and carnal a people as were the Israelites. All the nations around them offered similar victims, from the banks of the Euphrates to the banks of the Nile. The Egyptians in particular, among whom they had so long sojourned, not only sacrificed animals to their gods, but selected the best of their kind. Indeed, I have ever been convinced, since I was capable of reflection, that the whole sacrificial and ceremonial laws of Moses, were chiefly borrowed from the priests of Egypt, but prudently accommodated by the Hebrew legislator to the relative situation of his own people, devested of profane licentiousness and barefaced idolatry, and restrained to the worship of one supreme God, who created the heavens and the earth, and whom HE WAS PLEASED TO CALL IEUE, IAO, OR JEHOVAH" !!!*

Geddes's Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures, p. 309. The ob servations which this extraordinary writer, who wishes to be distinguished by the title of a CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN, subjoins to the passage above referred to, will serve still farther to show the true nature of his claims to that denomination." This name, (he says, alluding to the name Jehovah) I think, he (Moses) must have learned in Midian: that he could not learn it in Egypt, is clear from this, that the name was not known there before he announced it as the name of the God of the Hebrews; and Jehovah himself is made to say, on mount Sinai, that he had never till then manifested himself by that name: but that the name before that was known in Midian, nay, that it was the name of the Deity whom Jethro principally, or perhaps exclusively worshipped, to me appears very probable from several circumstances." Having enumerated these circumstances, which enable him to pronounce that Moses had put a gross falsehood into the mouth of Jehovah upon this subject, he concludes thus; "From all this I think it probable, that the name Jehovah was known in Midian, Moab, and Syria, before the mission of Moses; and that Moses may have borrowed it thence.-Those who literally believe what is related in the third chapter of Exodus, will sneer at this remark; and they are welcome so to do: I will never be angry with any one for believing either too much or too little.”

Now if we follow this writer to his Remarks upon the third chapter of Exodus, we shall learn what it is that he considers as believing just enough. Moses, in that chapter, informs us of "the angel of the Lord, appearing to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush ;-and of the divine mission then expressly conveyed to him by God himself speaking out of the burning bush, and describing himself as "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"-Now what says Dr. Geddes on this? "That in his apprehension, there might, in this particular apparition, be no other angel or messenger, than an uncommon luminous appearance in a bush of briers; which attracted the attention of Moses, and might be considered by him as a divine call to return to Egypt, for the purpose of delivering his brethren from their iron bondage." Then having proved the propriety of calling this luminous appearance in the bush of briers, the angel of the Lord, and even God himself, from the passage in the Psalmist, "The Lord maketh the winds his messengers, and flames of fire his ministers;" and recollecting the necessity of explaining how this luminous appearance, or flaming angel, was enabled to hold in the name of the Most High, a long and distinct conversation with Moses, he boldly faces about, and meets the difficulty at once." But can it be believed, that the whole dialogue contained in this and the following chapters, is founded upon the single phenomenon of a fiery meteor, or luminous appearance in a bush of briers? What may

And again this same enlightened expositor of holy writ unfolds, much to the credit of the Jewish legislator, the great advantages attending his imposition of Egyptian ceremonies

appear credible or incredible to others, I know not: but I know, that I can believe this, sooner than believe that God and Moses verbally conversed together in the manner here related, on the bare authority of a Jewish historian, who lived no one can well tell when or where: and who seems to have been as fond of the marvellous as any Jew of any age. But let every one judge for himself, as he has an undoubted right to do; and believe as much, or as little as pleaseth him.My belief is my own."

Such is Dr. Geddes's enlightened view of this part of scripture, on which the claim of the Jewish legislator to a divine mission is founded. He states indeed, with a modesty truly becoming, that his belief upon the subject is purely his own. So I will venture to add for him, it will ever remain. For although some may be found, whose reach of philosophical reflection may just serve to enable them with Dr. Geddes to reject the narrative of Moses as a fabrication, and his pretensions to a divine mission as an imposture; yet, that nice, discriminating taste in miracles that could catch the flavour of a nearer approach to credibility in the case of a burning bush of briers carrying on a long conversation in the name of the Almighty, than in the case of that great Being directly communicating his will, and issuing his commands to one of his intelligent creatures, respecting a great religious dispensation to be introduced into the world by human agency,-is likely to secure to Dr. G. an eminence in singularity from which he is in no great danger of experiencing the slightest disturbance.

I cannot however yet dismiss this subject, and still less can I dismiss one so serious with an air of levity. However ludicrous, and however contemptible the wild fancies, and the impotent scoffs of this traducer of scripture truths may be, yet the awful importance of that sacred book with which he has connected himself in the capacity of translator, (a treacherous one in every sense of the word) bestows upon his labours by association a con. sequence, which (barely) rescues them from present neglect, though it can. not operate to secure them from future oblivion. In the declaration of his creed, (Pref. to Crit Rem. p vi.) and in the vindication of himself from the charge of infidelity, he affirms "the gospel of Jesus to be his religious code; and his doctrines to be his dearest delight:" he professes himself to be "a sincere, though unworthy disciple of Christ." "Christian (he says) is my name, and Catholic my surname. Rather than renounce these glorious titles, I would shed my blood:" &c. Now in what does this Catholic Christianity consist? Not merely as we have seen in denying the divine mission of Moses, and in charging the messenger of that dispensation which was the forerunner of Christianity, with the fabrication of the most gross and infamous falsehoods, but in attributing to our Lord himself a participation in those falsehoods, by their adoption and application to his own purposes in his conferences with the Jews. For the establishment of this, it will be sufficient to appeal to our Lord's solemn attestation to the truth of Moses's narrative of the transaction alluded to. "And as touching the dead that they rise; have ye not read in THE BOOK OF MOSES, how in the bush GOD SPAKE UNTO HIM, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (Mark xii. 26.)-What the Catholic Christianity of Dr. Geddes amounts to, may be sufficiently inferred from the comparison of this single passage with the positions which he maintains in direct opposition to the authority of our Lord himself.

But it will appear still more satisfactory from a short summary of his services in the cause of holy writ, presented to us by the pen of an accurate and judicious writer, in the pages of a well-known periodical publication.The method taken by this Catholic Christian, of strengthening the foundation of the faith of Christians, seems very extraordinary. For it consists

as matter of divine ordinance upon his people. "This concession must have been extremely agreeable to a sensual, grovelling people. The transition from the habits which

in tearing up all the foundations which the learning, and the piety of the di vines of former ages had been employed to lay. It would perhaps be doing more justice to his great enterprize, to say, that it is an attempt to tear up the foundations which the SPIRIT OF GOD has laid. He attacks the credit of Moses in every part of his character; as an historian, a legislator, and a moralist. Whether Moses was himself the writer of the Pentateuch, is, with Dr. G. a matter of doubt. But the writer, whoever he might be, is one, he tells us, who upon all occasions gives into the marvellous, adorns his narrative with fictions of the interference of the Deity, when every thing happened in a natural way; and at other times dresses up fable in the garb of true history. The history of the creation is, according to him, a fabulous cosmogony. The story of the Fall, a mere Mythos, in which nothing but the imagination of Commentators, possessing more piety than judgment, could have discovered either a seducing Devil, or the promise of a Saviour. It is a fable, he asserts, intended for the purpose of persuading the vulgar that knowledge is the root of all evil, and the desire of it a crime. Moses was, it seems, a man of great talents, as Numa and Lycurgus were. But like them, he was a false pretender to personal intercourse with the Deity, with whom he had no immediate communication He had the art to take advantage of rare but natural occurrences, to persuade the Israelites that the immediate power of God was exerted to accomplish his projects. When a violent wind happened to lay dry the head of the gulph of Suez, he persuaded them that God had made a passage for them through the sea; and the narrative of their march is embellished with circumstances of mere fiction. In the delivery of the decalogue, he took advantage of a thunder storm, to persuade the people that Jehovah had descended upon mount Si. nai; and he counterfeited the voice of God by a person in the height of the storm, speaking through a trumpet. He presumes even that God had no immediate hand in delivering the Israelites from the Egyptian bondage. The story of Balaam and his ass has had a parallel in certain incidents of Dr. Geddes's own life. The laws of Moses are full of pious frauds. His animal sacrifices were institutions of ignorance and superstition. The con quest of Canaan was a project of unjust ambition, executed with cruelty; and the morality of the Decalogue itself, is not without its imperfections. --In the end he comes to this very plain confession. "The God of Moses, Jehovah, if he really be such as he is described in the Pentateuch, is not the God whom I adore, nor the God whom I could love, &c.” (Brit. Critic, vol. xix. pp. 3, 4.)

Such are the views of the Hebrew scriptures entertained by the man who undertook to be their translator; and who to these qualifications for the task, superadded those of a low and ludicrous cast of mind, a vulgar taste, and an almost total unacquaintance with the idiom of the English language. Whether then upon the whole, I have dealt unjustly by this writer, in exemplifying his profane ravings, by the brutal intoxication of the Spartan slave, and in conceiving the bare exhibition of the one to be sufficient like that of the other, to inspire horror and disgust; I leave to the candid reader to determine. If however, any taste can be so far vitiated, or any judgment so weak, as to admit to serious and respectful consideration, that perversion of the sacred volume which he would dignify with the title of a translation, I would recommend at the same time a perusal of the learned and judi cious strictures upon that work contained in the XIVth and XIXth volumes of the Journal from which the above extract has been made, a Journal to which every friend of good order, and true religion in the community, must feel himself deeply indebted. As a powerful antidote against the poison of the work, Dr. Graves's Lectures on the four last books of the Pentateuch,

The object

they had contracted in Egypt was an easy one. of their worship was changed, BUT LITTLE OF ITS MODE; FOR IT IS NOT NOW A QUESTION AMONG THE LEARNED, whether a great part of their ritual were not derived from that nation." (Geddes's Preface to Genesis, p. xiii.) Thus easily is the whole matter settled by this modest, cautious, and pious Commentator.

Now what says Dr. Priestley upon this question which has been so completely set at rest by the learned? "They who suppose that Moses himself was the author of the institutions, civil or religious, that bear his name, and that in framing them he borrowed much from the Egyptians, or other ancient nations, MUST NEVER HAVE COMPARED THEM TOGETHER. Otherwise they could not but have perceived many circumstances in which they differ most essentially from them all." He then proceeds through a dissertation of some length to point out the most striking of those differences: and among these he notices the sacrificial discrepancies as not the least important.

"Sacrificing (he says) was a mode of worship more ancient than idolatry or the institutions of Moses; but among the heathens various superstitious customs were introduced respecting it, which were all excluded from the religion of the Hebrews." Having evinced this by a great variety of instances, he observes; "As Moses did not adopt any of the heathen customs, it is equally evident that they borrowed nothing from him with respect to sacrifices. With them we find no such distinction of sacrifices as is made in the books of Moses, such as burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, trespassofferings, and peace-offerings, or of the heaving or waving of the sacrifices. Those particulars therefore he could not have had from them, whether we can discover any reason for them or not. They either had their origin in the time of Moses, or, which is most probable, were prior to his time and to the existence of idolatry."—" Lastly, (he remarks) among all the heathens, and especially in the time of Moses, HUMAN SACRIFICES were considered as the most acceptable to the gods; but in the laws of Moses nothing is mentioned with greater abhorrence; and it is expressly declared to have been a principal cause of the expulsion of the idolatrous inhabitants of Canaan. The right of the Divine Being to claim such sacrifices is intimated by the command to sacrifice

whilst embracing much larger, and more important objects, may be most usefully applied. In this valuable performance, the authenticity and truth of the Mosaic history are established; the theological, moral, and political principles of the Jewish law are elucidated; and all are, with ability and success, vindicated against the objections of infidels and gainsayers.

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