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take his ground where he will, provided he does not go without the heathen pale, and let him keep it. Let him borrow no assistance from Moses, and let him assume to himself all the lights that he can find, all the rational religion he can collect, not only in the world then known, but in the world since discovered; in all the nations of the East, where reason, surely, as far as arts and sciences were concerned, was in no contemptible state; in America, to the north and south, in all the continents and islands which modern navigation has added to the map of the world, as the Romans knew it in the Augustan age; let him pursue his researches, and when he has made his tour through all their temples and pagodas, let him erect his trophies to reason, and publish his discoveries with what confidence he may. Alas! for mankind and the boasted dignity of human reason, he will bring back nothing but a raree-show of idols; a museum of monsters; Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese deformities and nondescripts; the creatures of earth, air, and sea: snakes, reptiles, even stocks and

stones

stones promoted to be Gods; and man, degenerating and debasing himself, to kneel down before these dumb divinities, and pay them worship.-And now, if this is all that he, who opposes the religion of Revelation, can discover and make prize of in the religion of reason, I give him joy of his discoveries, and wish him candidly to declare if, upon result of those discoveries, he can believe so well of himself as to suppose that had he lived in those days, he would have found out any thing more than was found out by those who lived in them: whether, if he had singly engrossed the collected wisdom of the seven wise men of Greece, he would have revealed a better system of religion to the world than Christ has revealed; and whether he would have known the will of God better than God knew himself, and more clearly have communicated it to mankind."

The second position which frequently presents itself to notice in modern sermons, and which proves that the Old Testament is less understood than it formerly was, respects the spiritual blindness and

ignorance

ignorance of the Jewish nation. When the subject of the Jewish dispensation is introduced into Sermons, the hearers are generally given to understand, that the Jews lived under a temporal covenant; that consequently they looked not beyond an earthly possession in the Land of Canaan; and that the doctrine of a future state, if revealed at all, was so faintly revealed under the law, as to make little or no impression on the public mind. This notion has frequently led to a false comparison between the Jewish and Christian dispensations; calculated to prevent a proper judgement being formed of ei

ther.

It may seem strange that, with the seventh article of our church before their eyes, which expressly declares "that both in the Old and New Testament, everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, and consequently that they are not to be heard who feign that the old fathers did look only for temporal promises;"-any ministers of the church of England should feel themselves justified in propagating an opinion, which so directly militates against

against their profession. The article considers the opinion under consideration to be a fiction, and as such to be rejected. A fiction, however, as it most certainly is, this opinion has nevertheless received the sanction of some of our most learned divines.

The great Dr. Barrow in his Sermons on the Imperfection of the Jewish Religion, says expressly; that, " as to evident discovery concerning the immortality of man's soul, or the future state (so material a point of religion, of so great moment and influence upon practice), even the Gentile theology (assisted by ancient common tradition) seems to have outgone the Jewish, grounding upon their revealed law; the Pagan priests more expressly taught, more frequently inculcated arguments drawn from thence, than the Hebrew prophets: a plain instance and argument of the imperfection of this religion." And it was upon the principle of the same supposed inferiority of the Jewish to the Pagan religion, so far as respected the knowledge of a future state, that Bishop Warburton (as it has been already observed) grounded

his paradoxical argument in support of the divine authority of Moses.

We should not be so much surprised to find an opinion, thus supported, generally received, did not the plain language of Scripture speak so decidedly against it. "Search the Scriptures," said our Saviour to the unbelieving Jews," for in them ye think ye have eternal life." On another occasion, to prove the resurrection from the dead, he appeals to the title which God assumed in his address to Moses. "As touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead but of the living." Matt. xxii. 31. In fact, the doctrine of a resurrection was the established doctrine of the Jewish Church. The exception in the case of the Sadducees, who denied a resurrection, proves the establishment of the general doctrine. The Sadducees were Heretics in the Jewish Church. And their heresy consisted in their maintaining a peculiar opinion, in opposition to the ac

knowledged

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