And

of Christ, to the peculiarities of Jewish manners. there was a circumstance in the return of the two tribes from captivity, which was to those who observed it in ancient times, and is to us at this day, a singular and unquestionable voucher of the early existence of their books. Nehemiah was appointed by the king of Persia to superintend the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. He had received much opposition in this work from Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, that district of Palestine which the ten tribes had inhabited, and into which the king of Assyria had, at the time of their captivity, transplanted his own subjects. The work, however, was finished, and Nehemiah proceeded in making the regulations which appeared to him necessary for maintaining order, and the observance of the law of Moses amongst the multitude whom he had gathered into Jerusalem. Some of these regulations were not universally agreeable; and Manasseh, a son of the high priest, who had married a daughter of Sanballat, fled at the head of the malcontent Jews into Samaria. The law of Moses was not acknowledged in Samaria, for the king of Assyria, after the first captivity, had sent a priest to instruct those whom he planted there, in the worship of the God of the country, and for some time they had offered sacrifices to idols in conjunction with the true God. But Manasseh, emulous of the Jews whom he had left, and considering the honour of a descendant of Aaron as concerned in the purity of worship which he established in his new residence, prevailed upon the inhabitants to put away their idols, built a temple to the God of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, and introduced a copy of the law of Moses, or the Pentateuch. He did not introduce any of the later books of the Old Testament, lest the Samaritans, observing the peculiar honours with which God had distinguished Jerusalem, "the place which he had chosen, to put his name there," should entertain less reverence for the temple of Gerizim. And as a farther mark of distinction, Manasseh had the book of the law written for the Samaritans, not in the Chaldee character, which Ezra had adopted in the copies of the law which he made for the Jews, to whom that language had become familiar during the captivity, but in the old Samaritan character. During the successive fortunes of the Jewish nation, the

Samaritans continued to reside in their neighbourhood, worshipping the same God, and using the same law. But between the two nations there was that kind of antipathy, which, in religious differences, is often the more bitter, the less essential the disputed points are, and which, in this case, proceeded so far that the Jews and Samaritans not only held no communion in worship, but had "no dealings with one another.”

Here then are two rival tribes stated in opposition and enmity five hundred years before Christ, yet acknowledging and preserving the same laws, as if appointed by Providence to watch over the corruptions which either might be disposed to introduce, and to transmit to the nations of the earth, pure and free from suspicion, those books in which Moses wrote of Jesus. The Samaritan Pentateuch is often quoted by the early fathers. After it had been unknown for a thousand years, it was found by the industry of some of those critics who lived at the beginning of the seventeenth century, amongst the remnant who still worship at Gerizim. Copies of it were brought into Europe, and the learned have now an opportunity of comparing the Samaritan text used by the followers of Manasseh, with the Hebrew or Chaldee text used by the Jews.

While this ancient schism thus furnished succeeding ages with jealous guardians of the Pentateuch, the existence and integrity of all their Scriptures were vouched by another event in the history of the Jews.

Alexander the Great, in the progress of his conquests, either visited the land of Judea, or received intelligence concerning the Jews. His inquisitive mind, which was no stranger to science, and which was intent upon great plans of commerce not less than of conquest, was probably struck with the peculiarities of this ancient people; and when he founded his city Alexandria, he invited many of the Jews to settle there. The privileges which he and his successors conferred upon them, and the advantages of that situation, multiplied the Jewish inhabitants of Alexandria; and the constant intercourse of trade obliged them to learn the Greek language, which the conquerors of Asia had introduced through all the extent of the Macedonian empire. Retaining the religion and manners of

Judea, but gradually forgetting the language of that country, they became desirous that their Scriptures, the canon of which was by this time complete, should be translated into Greek; and it was especially proper that there should be a translation of the Pentateuch for the use of the synagogue, where a portion of it was read every Sabbath-day. We have the best reason for saying that that translation of the Old Testament, which, from an account of the manner of its being made, probably in many points fabulous, has received the name of the Septuagint, was begun at Alexandria about two hundred and eighty years before Christ; and we cannot doubt that the whole of the Pentateuch was translated at once. Learned men have conjectured, indeed, from a difference of style, that the other parts of the Old Testament were translated by other hands. But it is very improbable that a work, so acceptable to the numerous and wealthy body of Jews who resided at Alexandria, would receive any long interruption after it was begun; and a subsequent event in the Jewish history appears to fix a time when a translation of the prophets would be demanded. About the middle of the second century before Christ, Antiochus Epiphanes, king of Syria, committed the most outrageous acts of wanton cruelty against the whole nation of the Jews; and as he contended with the king of Egypt for the conquest of Palestine, we may believe that the Jews of Alexandria shared the fate of their brethren, as far as the power of Antiochus could reach them. Amongst other edicts which he issued, he forbade any Jews to read the law of Moses in public. As the prohibition did not extend to the prophets, the Jews began at this time to substitute portions of the prophets instead of the law. After the heroical exploits of the Asmonæan family, the Maccabees, had delivered their country from the tyranny of Antiochus, and restored the reading of the law, the prophets continued to be read also; and we know that, before the days of our Saviour, reading both the law and the prophets was a stated part of the synagogue service. In this way the whole of the Septuagint translation came to be used in the churches of the Hellenistical Jews scattered through the Grecian cities; and we are told it was used in some of the synagogues of Judea.

When Rome, then, entered into an alliance with the princes of the Asmonæan line, who were at that time independent sovereigns, and when Judea, experiencing the same fate with the other allies of that ambitious republic, was subdued by Pompey about sixty years before the birth of our Saviour, the books of the Jews were publicly read in a language which was then universal. The diffusion of the Jews through all parts of the Roman empire, and the veneration in which they held their Scriptures, conspired to assure the heathen that such books existed, and to spread some general knowledge of their contents: and even could we suppose it possible for a nation so zealous of the law, and so widely scattered as the Jews were, to enter into a concert for altering their Scriptures, we must be sensible that insuperable difficulties were thrown in the way of such an attempt, by the animosity between the religious sects which at that time flourished in Judea. The Sadducees and the Pharisees differed upon essential points respecting the interpretation and extent of the law; they were rivals for reputation and influence; there were learned men upon both sides, and both acknowledged the authority of Moses; and thus, as the Samaritans and the Jews in ancient times were appointed of God to watch over the Pentateuch; so, in the ages immediately before our Saviour, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were faithful guardians of all the ancient Scriptures.

Such is the amount of that testimony to the existence of their sacred books, long before the days of our Saviour, with which the Jews, a nation superstitiously attached to their law, widely spread, and strictly guarded, present them to the world; and to this testimony there are to be added the many internal marks of authenticity which these books exhibit to a discerning reader,-the agreement of the natural, the civil, and the religious history of the world, with those views which they present-the incidental mention that profane writers have made of Jewish customs and peculiarities, which is always strictly conformable to the contents of these books-the express reference to many of them that occurs in the New Testament, a reference which must have destroyed the credit of the Gospels and Epistles, if the books referred to had not been known to have a previous existence-and, lastly,

the evidence of Josephus, the Jewish historian, a man of rank and of science, who may be considered as a contemporary of Jesus, and who has given in his works a catalogue of the Jewish books, not upon his own authority, but upon the authority and ancient conviction of his nation, a catalogue which agrees both in number and in description with the books of the Old Testament that we now receive. Even Daniel, the only writer of the Old Testament against the authenticity of whose book any special objections have been offered, is styled by Josephus a prophet, and is extolled as the greatest of the prophets; and his book is said by this respectable Jew to be a part of the canonical Scriptures of his nation.*

It appears from laying all these circumstances together, that as our Lord and his apostles had a title to assume, in their addresses to the Gentiles, the previous existence of the Jewish Scriptures as a fact generally and clearly known, so no doubt can be reasonably entertained of this fact, even in the distant age in which we live. I do not speak of these Scriptures as a divine revelation; I abstract entirely from that sacred authority which the Christian religion communicates to them; I speak of them merely as an ancient book; and I say, that while there is no improbability in the remote date which any part of this book claims, there is real satisfying evidence, to which no degree of scepticism can justify any man for refusing his assent, that all the parts had an existence, and might have been known in the world, some centuries before the Christian era.

Having thus satisfied our minds of the previous existence of those Scriptures, to which Jesus appeals as containing characters of the Messiah which are fulfilled in him, it is natural, before we examine his appeal, to inquire whether the nation, who have transmitted these Scriptures, entertained any expectation of such a person. For although it be possible that they might be ignorant of the full meaning of the oracles committed to them, and that a great Prophet might explain to the nations of the earth that true sense which the keepers of these oracles did not understand, yet his appeal would be received with more

*Joseph. lib. x. cap. 11, 12.