filled. The past, the present, and the future, have a connected reference to one great plan, which infinite wisdom, prescience, and power, could alone form, reveal, and execute. Every succeeding age throws an increasing light upon these sacred writings, and contributes additional evidence to their divine origin.

I have thus given an historical detail of the gradual production and preservation of the books of the Old Testament, and of their formation into a regular Canon; I have also stated the grounds of our belief in the integrity of the copies which have been transmitted to us, and the general arguments in favour of the Authenticity and Inspiration of these invaluable writings. But as it is the practice of the sceptics of the present day to endeavour to shake the foundations of Christianity by undermining the authority of the Old Testament; and as their attacks are particularly directed against the genuineness and credit of the Books of Moses, upon which the other antient Scriptures greatly depend, it may be useful to offer some farther considerations to prove, that the Pentateuch was really the work of Moses, and that it is our duty, as St. Paul thought it his, "to believe all things which are written in the law and in the prophets (k)."

(k) Acts, c. 24. v. 14.

The

The first argument to be adduced in favour of the genuineness of the Pentateuch, is the universal concurrence of all antiquity. The rival kingdoms of Judah and Israel, the hostile sects of Jews and Samaritans, and every denomination of early Christians, received the Pentateuch as unquestionably written by Moses; and we find it mentioned and referred to by many heathen authors, in a manner which plainly shews it to have been the general and undisputed opinion in the pagan world, that this book was the work of the Jewish legislator. Nicolaus of Damascus (1), after describing Baris, a high mountain in Armenia, upon which it was reported that many, who fled at the time of the deluge, were saved, and that one came on shore upon the top of it from an ark, which was a great while preserved, adds, "this might be the man about whom Moses, the legislator of the Jews, wrote (m)." We are told that Alexander Polyhistor (n) mentioned a

(1) A peripatetic philosopher, and a poet, historian, and orator of great eminence, in the time of Augustus. Nothing remains of his works but some fragments preserved in other authors.

(m) Jos. Ant. lib. 1. cap. 3.

(n) He was called Polyhistor from his great knowledge of antiquity. He wrote an Universal History, mentioned by several authors, but now lost. He lived about fifty years before Christ.

history

history of the Jews written by Cleodemus, which was, "agreeable to the history of Moses their legislator (o)." Diodorus Siculus (p) mentions Moses as the legislator of the Jews in three different places of his remaining works in the first book of his history, where he is speaking of the written laws of different nations, he says, that

among the Jews Moses pretended to have received his laws from a God called Iao (q)." In a fragment of the thirty-fourth book he mentions "the Book of the Laws given by Moses to the Jews;" and in a fragment of the fortieth book, after giving some account of the conduct and laws of Moses, he says, that "Moses concludes his laws by declaring, that he had heard from God the things which he addresses to the Jews." Strabo speaks of the description which Moses gave of the Deity, and says that he condemned the religious worship of the Egyptians. His statement is by no means accurate, but it is sufficient to shew that he considered the Pentateuch as written by Moses (r). The accounts

(0) Jos. Ant. lib. 1. cap. 15.

(p) He lived in the time of Augustus. Vide vol. 1. p. 105. vol. 2. p. 525 & 543. Edit. Wesseling.

tus.

(9) That is Jehovah.

(r) Geog. lib. 16. He lived in the time of Augus

which Justin (s) and Tacitus (t) have left of the Jews are also very erroneous; but it is evident that they both admitted the Pentateuch to be the work of Moses. Pliny the elder (u) mentions "a system of magic," as he calls it, which was derived from Moses. Juvenal (r) the satirist speaks of the volume of the law written by Moses. The illustrious physician and philosopher Galen (y) compares the account given by Moses with the opinion of Epicurus concerning the origin of the world, and in that comparison he plainly refers to the book of Genesis. Numenius, a Pythagorean philosopher of the second century, says, that Plato borrowed from the writings of Moses his doctrines concerning the existence of a God, and the creation of the world (z). Longinus (a), in his treatise upon the Sublime, says, "So likewise the Jewish

(s) Trogus Pompeius, whose history Justin abridged, lived in the time of Augustus. Vide lib. 36.

(t) Hist. lib. 5. He lived at the end of the first century after Christ.

(u) Hist. Nat. lib. 30. cap. I. He lived in the reign of Vespasian.

(x) Sat. 14. He lived in the reign of Domitian. (y) De Usu Part. lib. 11. He lived in the middle of the second century after Christ.

(z) Stillingfleet's Orig. Sacræ, b. 3. c. 2.

(a) Longinus lived towards the end of the third century after Christ. Vide sect. 9.

legislator,

legislator, no ordinary person, having conceived a just idea of the power of God, has nobly expressed it in the beginning of his law; 'And God said,'-What?— Let there be light, and there was light. Let the earth be, and the earth was'." Porphyry (b), one of the. most acute and learned enemies of Christianity, admitted the genuineness of the Pentateuch, and acknowledged that Moses was prior to the Phoenician Sanchoniathon, who lived before the Trojan war; he even contended for the truth of Sanchoniathon's account of the Jews, from its coincidence with the Mosaic history. Nor was the genuineness of the Pentateuch denied by any of the numerous writers against the Gospel in the first four centuries, although the christian fathers constantly appealed to the history and prophecies of the Old Testament, in support of the divine origin of the doctrines which they taught. The power of historic truth compelled the emperor Julian, whose apparent favour to the Jews proceeded only from his hostility to the Christians, to acknowledge that persons instructed by the Spirit of God once lived among the Israelites; and to confess, that the books which bore the name of Moses, were genuine, and that the facts which they contained were worthy of (b) He lived in the third century after Christ. VOL. I. D

credit.