ment; no reasoning man could ever conceive that the foul of Nero and the foul of Antoninus in a future ftate partook of the fame common lot; and thus it follows upon the evidence of reafon, that the foul of man shall be rewarded or punished hereafter according to his good or evil conduct here; and this.confequence is the more obvious, because it does not appear in the moral government of the world, that any fuch just and regular diftribution of rewards and punishments obtains on this fide the grave; a circumftance no otherwife to be reconciled to our fuitable conceptions of divine justice, than by referring things to the final decifion of a judgment to come.

Though all these discoveries are open to reafon, let no man conclude that what the reafon of a few discovered were either communicated to, or acknowledged by all: No; the world was dark and grofsly ignorant; fome indeed have argued well and clearly; others confufedly, and the bulk of mankind not at all; the being of a God, and the unity of that Supreme. Being ftruck conviction to the hearts of those, who employed their reafon coolly and difpaffionately infuch fublime

fublime enquiries; but where was the multitude meanwhile? Bewildered with a mob of deities, whom their own fables had endowed with human attributes, paffions and infirmities; whom their own fuperftition had deified and enrolled amongst the immortals, till the facred hiftory of Olympus became no less impure than the journals of a brothel Many there were no doubt, who saw the monstrous abfurdity of such a fyftem, yet not every one, who difcerned error, could discover truth; the immortality of the foul, a doctrine so harmonious to man's nature, was decried by fyftem and opposed by fubtilty; the queftion of a future ftate was hung up in doubt, or bandied between conflicting difputants through all the quirks and evasions of fophiftry and logic: Philofophy, fo called, was fplit into a variety of fects, and the hypothesis of each enthusiastic founder became the standing creed of his school, which it was an inviolable point of honour never to defert: In this confufion of fyftems men chose for themselves not according to conviction, but by the impulse of paffion, or from motives of convenience; the voluptuary was interested to difmifs the gods.

gods to their repofe, that his might not be interrupted by them; and all, who wished to have their range of fenfuality in this world. without fear or controul, readily enlisted under the banners of Epicurus, till his followers outnumbered all the reft; this was the court-creed under the worft of the Roman emperors, and the whole body of the nation, with few exceptions, adopted it; for what could be more natural, than for the desperate to bury confcience in the grave of atheism, or rush into annihilation by the point of the poniard, when they were weary of existence and difcarded by fortune? With fome it was the ftandard principle of their fect to doubt, with others to argue every thing; and when we recollect that Cicero himself was of the New Academy, we have a clue to unravel all the feeming contradictions of his moral and metaphysical sentiments, amidst the confusion of which we are never to expect his real opinion, but within the pale of his own particular school, and that school profeffed controversy upon every point. I will inftance one paffage, which would have done honour to his fentiments, had he spoke his own language

guage as well as that of the Platonists, whom he is here perfonating--Nec vero Deus, qui intelligitur a nobis, alio modo intelligi poteft, quam mens foluta quædam et libera, fegregata ab omni concretione mortali, omnia fentiens et movens. Whilft the pureft truths were thrown out only as themes for fophistry to cavil at, the mafs of inankind refembled a chaos, in which if fome few sparks of light glimmered, they only served to caft the general horror into darker fhades.

It must not however be forgotten, that there was a peculiar people then upon earth, who profeffed to worship that one Supreme Being, of whofe nature and attributes certain individuals only amongst the Gentile nations entertained fuitable conceptions.

Whilft all the known world were idolaters by establishment, the Jews alone were Unitarians upon fyftem. Their history was. most wonderful, for it undertook to give a relation of things, whereof no human records. could poffibly be taken, and all, who received it for truth, muft receive it as the relation of God himfelf, for how elfe fhould men obtain a knowledge of the Creator's thoughts. and operations in the firft formation of all

things?

things? Accordingly we find their inspired historian, after he has brought down his narration to the journal of his own time,. holding conferences with God himself, and receiving through his immediate communication certain laws and commandments, which he was to deliver to the people, and according to which they were to live and be governed. In this manner Mofes appears as the commiffioned legislator of a Theocracy, impowered to work miracles in confirmation of his vicegerent authority, and todenounce the most tremendous punishments upon the nation, fo highly favoured, if in any future time they should difobey and fall off from these facred ftatutes and ordi

nances.

A people under fuch a government, fet. apart and diftinguished from all other nations by means fo fupernatural, form a very interesting object for our contemplation, and their history abounds in events no less extraordinary and miraculous than the revelation itself of thofe laws, upon which their conftitution was firft eftablifhed: Their tedious captivities, their wonderful deliver-> ances, the ad.ninistration of their priests and

prophets,