the conviction of our minds, muft bear teftimony to the fitness of the person. Great was determined to form a conftitution entirely new, (and this, he knew was impoffible, unless he called in the fictitious aid of religion) he wished to perfuade the ignorant multitude that he was infpired by the Gods after the example of Minos but notwithstanding the oracles declared for him, he found it difficult, But the fincerity of the man being univerfally believed, at length banished fufpicion, efpecially as he retrenched. the royal authority, by forming a fort. of mixed government, which in a great measure appeared to fecure the liberty of the fubject. He feigned to unite all into the nature of one family, where reciprocity of intereft was the most indiffoluble tie. Mofes was not the fon of a king like Lycurgus, tho' educated at the court of Pharaoh, and poffeffed of every neceffary education; he was but a private perfon tending the flock of. his father in-law, when he undertook to be the deliverer of the Jews. His infpiration was not a fiction, but reality, established in the fight of all the Egyptians; fuch divine power was fufficient to render the people fubmiffive to the laws, especially, as these laws were established on the basis of religious duty, and ratified by the profperity attending their obedience, and by the punishments which, as if naturally accompanied their difobedience. The whole people were formed upon the plan of a diftinct family, whofe profperity depended on their religious duties. The laws of Lycurgus were unwritten and merely traditional, whereas thofe of Mofes were written. We are told by Ariftotle, that before the invention of letters it was cuftomary. for people to fing their laws, that this was the reason why mufical rules for keeping time were called But Solon was the first among the Greeks who established written laws, knowing that tradition was liable to corruption; these laws were written upon tablets of wood; but all the laws of Lycurgus, and of Solon, nay, of all the wifeft men in Greece, did not preferve the pure spirit of moral virtue which is contained in the decalogue of Mofes; which, improved by the chriftian fyftem, has become the bafis of law to the wifeft ftates of Europe: they are part of the common laws of England, νομοι. Great are the abilities neceffary to govern a people, who are, already, in a flourishing state, England, and are in many inftances the bafis of ftatute law. And I will venture to affirm that if any intire nation which has any claim to modern improvement in literature were to become downright fceptics, yet they could not conftitute any system of laws which would anfwer the end of civil government, without having refpect to the moral law of Mofes, and borrowing precepts from it as improved and established by the law of Chrift. The fureft teft, therefore, of the fuperiority of laws is by their duration, for what is intrinfically valuable fociety must adopt. The laws of Solon and Lycurgus are in non-existence, whilft thofe of Mofes fhall endure for ever, because they are of divine authority. From hence arifes an argument, that fince Mofes wrote at fo early an age, long before the cultivation of knowledge in by far the greater part of the world, he could not have established laws of fuch duration unless he was divinely taught; fince the labours of the wifeft men that fucceeded him have perished, whilst his remain in full vigour; the very people of the Jews remain as a living monument of the first revelation; nay, it is, a ftanding miracle concerning the mutability of human affairs. Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius have reproached Lycurgus, becaufe his laws were more adapted to make men brave than just the immorality of his laws is too univerfally acknowledged to make it neceffary to point them out particularly; the manner in which the Helotes were treated is fufficient to shew what little fenfe the Spartans had of natural justice. When Solon made his laws, learning had advanced in Greece, and their morality was better, yet Solon himself was fenfible of the defects of his own laws. When it is remembered that Lycurgus, brother to Polydectes, was folicited by the Lacedemonians to take the reins of government, and that he nobly refused the offer of his brother's widow, which would have fecured the kingdom to him, by procuring an abortion, on condition of his marrying her: From a Prince, whofe conduct was, on this occafion fo perfectly confifient with true morality, it might be expected that ftate, and whofe municipal laws have been already established, on the firmest basis of political wisdom. But to influence the minds of the most illiterate people, who had been, during a long series of oppreffion, reduced to the most abject state; to inspire them with noble and animated ideas, to render them amenable to reason and religion, who had been buried in ignorance and superstition, and that almost inftantaneously, must be acknowledged to have been that all his laws would have been grounded on the fame principle; but on due examination we are disappointed: Fortitude and valour alone were the bafis of his laws, fupported only by continual wars. This is obferved by * Aristotle, who was of the fame opinion with Cicero, that war is to be undertaken in order to procure peace, the laws of peace are moral and religious virtues: in thefe Lycurgus was deficient ; nay, he encouraged deceit, theft, and incontinency his restrictive rules and fumptuary laws were calculated only to make good foldiers; in other refpects vice was encouraged by the most powerful incentives, and adultery fanctioned by reasons which afterwards were very properly expofed by Aristotle. But after all, what fhall we think of Ariftotle, the disciple of the divine Plato? one would imagine that he ought in moral rectitude to have exceeded all his predeceffors, but it was not fo: he authorized the inhuman custom of expofing children who had any deformity, to perish like the offspring of brutes; he juftified the barbarous practice of procuring abortion when children exceeded a limited number; a practice fo juftly reprobated by Cicero +, who fays, two things are incompatible, that nature fhould have procreation, and when a creature is born, that it fhould not be loved and preferved. In Polit. L. 2. cap. 7. Cic. in Off. lib, 2. + Cicero de fin. lib. 13. been only the work of Almighty Power, Therefore, exalted was the dignity, and everlasting the honour conferred on Mofes, in being chofen the inftrument of emancipating his brethren from this miferable state. Philo, in his fecond book of the life of Mofes, fays *, "Facultati legislatoriæ quatuor hæc funt conjunctiffima, charitas erga proximos, juftitia, amor virtutum et vitiorum odium. Hæc vel fingula, magnum eft alicui contingere, mirandum vero fi universa unus poffit confequi, quod in folo Mofe licet cernere, eminentibus in eo manifeftis cunctarum modo indiciis." Clofely united with the office of legiflator are these four, charity, juftice, the love of virtue, and the hatred of vice, each of which may be confidered as a valuable acquifition to any perfon, but we can no where fee those virtues so eminently united by every striking characteristic, as in the perfon, and especially in the laws of Mofes. Divine Providence, whofe watchful eye fuperintends all his works, raifes from diftress, from the verge of mifery and death, men who have been otherwife lft deftitute of every apparent means of affiftance, humbles their haughty enemies, and raises humble virtue * From Hody, virtue to exalted ftations. Thus, Jofeph, by the unnatural hatred of his cruel brethren, exposed to famine and to death, was raised to be the prime minister of Pharaoh, and became inftrumental in faving a nation. Thus Romulus, the Founder of the Roman empire, is faid to have been faved from perishing in the Tiber; and thus alfo Mofes, the great lawgiver of the Jews, was taken out of the Nile, and preferved by Pharaoh's daughter, who educated him as her own fon, and had him carefully instructed in every branch of Egyptian Literature. Thus Clemens Alexandrinus relates the circumftance. σε Τίθεται τω παιδίω όνομα ή βασιλις Μωϋσην ετύμως, δια τω εξ υδατι ανελεσθαι αυτόν; τω γας udwn μων ονομάζεσι. Αιγυπτιοι εἰς ὁ εκτεθειται Tel." The Queen gave the boy, Mofes, a name founded in truth, because he was taken out of the water; for the Egyptians call water, moy, in which he was exposed to perish. It is a circumftance very remarkable, and which has escaped the attention of any commentators that I have met with; that Mofes from his infancy, being educated under the directions of thofe very persons who hated his brethren, it was natural to fuppofe, that every fentiment was fedulously cultivated by them, which might impress his |