by which they are inflicted. The sanctions of the Mosaic law were, in your opinion, terminated within the narrow limits of this life; in that particular, then, they must have resembled the sanctions of all other civil laws: transgress and die is the language of every one of them, as well as that of Moses; and I know not what reason we have to expect that the Jews, who were animated by the same hopes of temporal rewards, impelled by the same fears of temporal punishments, with the rest of mankind, should have been so singular in their conduct, as never to have listened to the clamours of passion before the still voice of reason; as never to have preferred a present gratification of sense, in the lewd celebration of idolatrous rites, before the rigid observance of irksome ceremonies.

Before I release you from the trouble of this Letter, I cannot help observing, that I could have wished you had furnished your reader with Limborch's answers to the objections of the Jew Orobio, concerning the perpetual obligation of the law of Moses. You have indeed mentioned Limborch with respect, in a short note; but though you have studiously put into the mouths

of the Judaising Christian in the apostolic days, and with great strength inserted in your text, whatever has been said by Orobio or others against Christianity, from the supposed perpetuity of the Mosaic dispensation; yet you have not favoured us with any one of the numerous replies which have been made to these seemingly strong objections. You are pleased, it is true, to say, "that the industry of our learned divines has abundantly explained the ambiguous language of the Old Testament, and the ambiguous conduct of the apostolic teachers." It requires, Sir, no learned industry to explain what is so obvious and so express, that he who runs may read it. The language of the Old Testament is this: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. This, methinks, is a clear and solemn declaration-there is no ambiguity at all in it-that the covenant with Moses was not to be perpetual, but was in some future time to give way to a new covenant. I will not detain you with an explanation of what Moses

himself has said upon this subject; but you may try, if you please, whether you can apply the following declaration, which Moses made to the Jews, to any prophet or succession of prophets, with the same propriety that you can to Jesus Christ The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me: unto him shall ye hearken. If you think this ambiguous or obscure, I answer, That it is not a history, but a prophecy, and, as such, unavoidably liable to some degree of obscurity, till interpreted by the event.

Nor was the conduct of the Apostles more ambiguous than the language of the Old Testament: they did not indeed at first comprehend the whole of the nature of the new dispensation: and when they did understand it better, they did not think proper upon every occasion to use their Christian liberty; but, with true Christian charity, accommodated themselves in matters of indifference to the prejudices of their weaker brethren. But he who changes his conduct with a change of sentiments, proceeding from an increase of knowledge, is not ambiguous in his conduct; nor should he be accused of a culpable

duplicity, who in a matter of the last importance endeavours to conciliate the good-will of all, by conforming in a few innocent observances to the particular persuasions of different men.

One remark more, and I have done. In your account of the Gnostics, you have given us a very minute catalogue of the objections which they made to the authority of Moses, from his account of the creation, of the patriarchs, of the law, and of the attributes of the Deity. I have not leisure to examine whether the Gnostics of former ages really made all the objections you have mentioned; I take it for granted, upon your authority, that they did: but I am certain, if they did, that the Gnostics of modern times have no reason to be puffed up with their knowledge, or to be had in admiration as men of subtile penetration or refined erudition: they are all miserable copiers of their brethren of antiquity; and neither Morgan, nor Tindal, nor Bolingbroke, nor Voltaire, have been able to produce scarce a single new objection. You think that the Fathers have not properly answered the Gnostics. I make no question, Sir, you are able to answer them to your own satisfaction,

and informed of every thing that has been said by our industrious divines upon the subject; and we should have been glad, if it had fallen in with your plan to have administered together with the poison its antidote: but since that is not the case, lest its malignity should spread too far, I must just mention it to my younger readers, that Leland and others, in their replies to the modern Deists, have given very full, and as many learned men apprehend, very satisfactory answers to every one of the objections which you have derived from the Gnostic Heresy.

I am, &c.