say that this is only some remarkable saying of Abraham and is therefore in the Jewish Phrase called the word of the Lord. For here is no room for any such kind of Metaphor Here is a particular Dialogue of God and Abraham God said Fear not Abram I am thy shield and thy exceeding great Reward And Abram said Lord God what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless and the Steward of my House is this Eliezer of Damascus Then v. 4. is related the reply of God Almighty And behold the word of the Lord came unto him saying This shall not be thy Heir but he that shall come forth out of thine own Bowels c. Now what can be more positive and express of Abraham's immediate Revelation and Intercourse with God than this Relation So again Exod. 2.5 The Revelation made to Moses is related as expresly God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said Moses Moses Then follows the answer of Moses and Moses said here am I. And the Lord said I have surely seen the affliction of my people c. Come now therefore and I will send thee unto Paraoh And Moses said unto God Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Children of Israel out of Aegypt And God said Certainly I will be with thee c. And after this rate the Dialogue continues the full length of the Chapter Now if this be not a relation of an Intercourse with God and a Revelation from him there is no sense to be put upon any words though never so plain there must be no assent given to the literal narrations of Thucydides or Livy but the credit of both those Histories may as well be criticized away as this So again as for the other Prophets when we are particularly told that the word of the Lord came unto them at such a time in such a manner in such a particular Year of such a King's Reign what can possibly be meant less than that God revealed this to them When they are commanded to take rolls and to write as Is 8 1. and Jer. 36.2 and the Prophecies so commanded to be written are there recorded when every Prophecy begins with the word of the Lord or thus saith the Lord when in some of them are particular Interlocutions between God and the Prophet if this be not Revelation the Prophets who wrote these Writings must be the greatest Cheats and Impostours in the World in so often pretending to it when they had not the least share of it But it vexes one to spend time to answer so simple an Objection which is worth no ones notice but that the great Spinosa has taken so much pains in it and other retailing Infidels after him would seem to do some great matter with it 3. Nor are your Criticisms upon the Hebrew Ruach or Spirit more solid Spirit of God in Scripture signifies Revelation by which you would pretend that word does not signify Revelation or Inspiration but only Wind Life temper of Mind and the like But what an unreasonable mistake is this I do not deny but that word in Hebrew has many significations as several other words have in that narrow Language But then on the other side there are a great many places in the Bible in which it can signify only Inspiration or Revelation what think you of Gen. 41.38 Where Pharaoh says of Joseph after he had interpreted his Dream and prophesied of the Years of Plenty and Famine Can we find such an one as this is a man in whom the Spirit of God is Certainly by the Spirit of God here is meant the Inspiration of God or there is no sense at all in it And so again Numb 27.18 The Lord said unto Moses Take thee Joshua the Son of Nun a Man in whom is the Spirit and lay thy hand upon him where by Spirit the Chaldee Paraphrase interprets Prophecy And what else can be meant by that Spirit of the Lord 1 Kings 18.12 which carried Eliah from place to place by which he did such mighty Miracles and so undauntedly uttered his Prophecies but only a supernatural power of God which did continually attend him And so Isa 59.21 God tells the Prophet that it was his Spirit that inspired him with the words that he spoke Saith the Lord My Spirit which is upon thee and the words which I have put into thy mouth c. And so several times in Ezechiel The Spirit of the Lord fell upon me Ezek. 11.5 and the Spirit entered into me Chap. 3.24 And often in the Book of Daniel the Spirit of the holy Gods is said to be in him Dan. 4.8 and 9 5.11 and 14. In short divine Revelation is all over the Old Testament called by the name of Spirit and even that extraordinary Inspiration which was foretold by the Prophet Joel to prevail under the Gospel is called so likewise I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh and your Sons and your Daughters shall prophesie your Old Men shall dream dreams and your Young Men shall see Visions Joel 2.28 Where you may particularly observe that the word Spirit is joyned with Prophecy and Revelation And upon this account the Holy Ghost which was the giver of these Prophetick Gifts is in the New Testament called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Holy Spirit And so is divine Revelation among the Heathens called by the same name As Dii coeptis inspirate meis and Inspirante Deo It is plain therefore that by the word Spirit in Scripture is frequently understood Divine Revelation which is the effect of the Operation of God's Holy Spirit conveying to the minds of several Prophetical Men whom God has been pleased to choose many extraordinary Truths conducible to the good of his Church Which is a thing so frequent and so plain in Scripture as is not to be bantered away by a little foolish Criticism and is a Truth never to be shaken unless the Infidels have force enough to overthrow the whole Body of the Scriptures Phil. Well we will see Credentius what we can do as to that matter some time or other But in the mean time methinks you outshoot your selves a little in your Notions of Revelation For you generally assert that Revelation is caused by a more immediate and supernatural Application of the divine Spirit to the mind of Man and so does make known to it those extraordinary Truths which indeed is only a Cast of the Jewish Unphilosophical Ignorance For when they poor Wretches could not understand the Natural Causes of Inspiration they were presently for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for calling in God to help out their sorry Philosophy Every thing which was a little surprizing to them they must needs attribute to the immediate Act of God they were every moment making Mountains as well as Men of God and according to their Philosophy an equal degree of the divine power was requisite as well to
obscure to us we should consult the Gods by Divination for they make known those things to them to whom they are propitious Indeed I think it but a vain attempt to go prove to you That Imagination is not the Cause of Inspiration for I do not suppose that in reality you do believe it only by this odd sort of disputing you endeavour to make our Religion stand upon as loose a bottom as you can that you may be able to overthrow it at your leasure For I dare say you do not believe a word of Revelation at all and therefore why should you trouble your self about the causes of it All that you and your Master Spinosa mean when you talk of Prophecies consisting in lively Imagination is that the inspired Prophets were only a parcel of Melancholy crack-brain'd Enthusiastical Folks that preached to the People of Judea a number of Phanatical Dreams and Visions But because there is so much pains taken in this Argument I will shew you that the Prophets or inspired Men of Scripture were not Men of this complexion as you contend for and that the Instances which you have alledged make nothing for this Opinion 1. For it does not appear that the Prophets were more Melancholy or Fanciful than other Men are Prophets not Melancholy And it is but a fancy of Mounsieur Petit de Sibyllis Lib. 1. to assert that Melancholy was the chief Disposition to make a Prophet and that Moses was an extraordinary Melancholy Man because he chose to live a solitary Life in the Wilderness feeding his Father-in-law Jethro's Sheep and because he is noted in Scripture to be slow of Speech Exod. 4.10 For these do not appear to be any Arguments at all of Melancholy For a Pastoral Life does by no means denote a Man to be of a Melancholick Complexion but contrariwise more debonair and pleasant and therefore the Shepherds in polite Nations as among the Greeks and Romans are always described as Men of great Mirth and Jollity and spending their whole Time in Pleasure and Gayety Neither did Moses leave the Aegyptian Court for a Melancholy Retirement in the Country but was forced to fly from Aegypt to avoid the Anger of the King after it was known that he had slain the Aegyptian Neither whilst he so absconded did he shew any sign of Melancholy there but only according to the Custom of his Nation and generally of those Ages chose to make his Employ the Keeping of Sheep So that David who is described in Scripture to be of a sanguine Complexion and famed for sprightful Singing and Playing may be as well taxed for Melancholy when he kept his Father's Sheep as Moses might Neither is the slowness of his Speech any Argument of his Melancholy because very sanguine Men are often troubled with that infirmity which does generally arise from some defect of the Vocal Organs in the Mouth and not from Mens Complexion and Temper of Mind And besides what is commonly translated slow of Speech is in the original Heavy or Difficult of Mouth which may be any defect of speaking which does render Men less easy to be understood by stammering or fast speaking as well as slow speaking And therefore Ezekiel 3.5 People of another Nation are said to be heavy of Language because they could not be easily understood by the Jews And Moses might as well have been very quick in his Talk and upon that account mightily given to Hesitation and then this would rather argue him to be of an eager and volatile Temper than any ways given to Melancholy But as for all the rest of the Prophets it is plain that they were no Melancholy Enthusiasts because their Discourses and Writings are perfectly different from what is usually said by that sort of Men. There is nothing comes from them but what is grave and sedate and agreeable to good sense and Reason and a well-composed mind Do we find any thing in them that is like the mad Transports of James Naylor Read but the lives of Sancta Teresa Vid. Dr. Stillingfleet's Fanaticism of the Church of Rome Dr. William's 1 Sermon 1696. and Maria Magdalena de Pazzi and see if the Prophetick Writings bear any manner of Correspondence with their foolish talk Did ever any one of the Prophets spend three Years before his Death in nothing but repeating such an odd Ejaculation as thy Will be done in Time and in Eternity as Molinos reports of Gregory of Lopez Besides their Writings are full of just reasoning and serious unaffected Relations which do by no wise agree to Enthusiastical Men. Read but the History of the Pentateuch and other Historical parts of the Bible and see if they look like the Compositions of wild Enthusiasts If Naylor had been to write the Book of Genesis he would have made an otherguise spot of work of it than Moses has He would have clogged every Relation with odd Parentheses Great is the Lord of Host Judgment Horror Desolation Damnation c. he would never have kept his brains close to the order of a just Narration but would have jumbled the Creation and the Flood Noah and Abraham and Pharaoh all together Do you think that any one of those Popish Dreamers could have made use of such solid Reasoning and such Critical Remarks upon the Old Law as are to be found in the Writings of St. Paul and the Author of the Book of the Hebrews Could they have made such wise observations upon humane Life and given such Rules of Piety and Conversation as the Books of Solomon are full of Could they have framed such admirable Forms of Devotion as the Book of Psalms All that they were able to do would be to write some mad stuff which no Man of sense would have Patience to read three Leaves of Had the Scriptures no other inspiration than the imagination of fanciful Brains there would no one part of it be coherent with another History would be clashing with History and Prophecy with Prophecy and nothing suit together with that order and symetry as now we find it Ask two craz'd Men in Bedlam to tell a story out of the Bible and then see how these Men of Imagination will correspond together talk singly with two Enthusiastical Quakers till they be warm upon the Book of the Revelations and see then how finely their Prophecies will agree I am sure they will fall infinitely short of being so uniformly of a piece as the holy Scriptures are Let the greatest Infidel of you all consider that wonderful correspondence there is between the four Evangelists among themselves where there is no difference to be found but what among Writers which had not confederated together should be and observe the same in the Books of Kings and Chronicles See how the same great Design is visible throughout the Mosaical Writings the Prophets and the Gospel How exactly does the lapse of Mankind by Adam agree with the Reparation made by Jesus Christ
to ruin their Character in the Opinion of all sober Deists whilst they must needs have a secret esteem for the Jewish Legislatour in setting the Worship of the one true God among his People alone in opposition to the whole Idolatrous World Nay that hostile odium which the Historian calls their Aversion to a free conversation with other Nations which their Law obliged them to was that which preserved both their Religion and their Laws from the encroaching powers of their Neighbouring Potentates For if they had wanted this they had been lost in their Babylonian Captivity and forever mixed with that Idolatrous Nation And truly this surliness was such a good piece of Policy among the Jews that we Englishmen in the midst of our complaisance should not do amiss to learn who have so long been fond of fetching over the Customs of a Neighbouring Nation that they seeing us so very obliging were once in a fair way to have sent us over their Government and Religion too Objections against particular Laws answered As to your exceptions which you have raised against some particular Instances in the Mosaical Law I think they are not very material The forbidding of the Blood of Animals for food was a Noachical Precept as well as Mosaical which God by a new sanction thought fit under Moses his dispensation to continue And at the first giving of it in Noah's time it was a very proper Injunction and highly rational For God at the same time gave Mankind a Licence to eat the Flesh of Animals excepting only the Blood This being as it were a kind of Sacrament or Token to put them in mind of the tenderness they ought to have in shedding Human Blood as appears by the Context where Murder is forbidden and Blood is required for Blood As to your objection against the Law of sowing mixed seed I presume the reason which Philo gives is sufficient that the strength of the ground might not be worn out thereby and no incouragement given to the Husbandman's Covetousness The wearing linsey woolsey was probably a proud fantastick fashion of the Heathens at that time which therefore the Jews were forbid to imitate Though further I believe all the three Conjunctions mentioned Deut. 22. of yoking the Ox with an Ass the mingling of seeds and wearing Linnen mixed with Woollen have as Theodoret observes something emblematical mixed with the precept to make Men have the greater abhorrence of all venereal commixtures contrary to nature As for the Lex Talionis of the Jews let it have been as rigid as you would make it it is no more than what was practised in other Nations and had a place among the celebrated Roman Laws in the 12 Tables Nuct Anic Lib. 20. c. 1. And as it is set down in Aulus Gellius is thus SI MEMBRVM RVPERIT NI CVM EO PACIT TALIO ESTO But the Jews say that for Mutilations where Death did not ensue a pecuniary Mulct was generally accepted and granted to the maimed person and that the Judge did never inflict the Talio but upon the desire of the injured party who unless he were very malicious would rather accept a recompence in Money And so for the Return of mortgaged Estates to the owners at the Jubilees there is no manner of injustice in this Law because the Estate could be sold for no more Money than an Annuity from the time of sale till the year of Jubilee was worth and it was at the purchaser's peril if he ventured more upon it And there was incouragement enough for Men of Parts and Industry to raise themselves by purchace only of Annuities for fifty years Nay further this Law seems to be excellently contrived to hinder the encroaching purchaces of Covetous Men which has given so much disturbance in all Common-wealths and which occasioned the Leges Agrariae which gave such great Content to the Roman * Liv. Hist Lib. 4. cap. 48. Lib. 6. c. 11.14 Citizens So Aristotle in his Politicks says †Arist Pol. Lib. 2. c. 7. That Solon made a Law and that other Countries have the same that every Man should not purchase as much Estate as he had a mind to And again the Law forbids to sell a Man's Houshould goods * Id. Lib. 6. c. 4. as the Law of the Locri which obliges a Man not to sell them unless he can make it out that some great calamity has befel him Besides the Law commands to keep those ancient Patrimonies which came by Inheritance And so again in another place In many Cities it is established by Law that no one should have power to alienate the ancient Inheritances And there is a Law which is said to be of Oxylus which injoyns that no one should lend Money to another and take his Estate as a Pawn for it So that if this be a fault in the Mosaical Laws the Attick and Roman are liable to the same Censure As for the Red Heifer which is commanded to be Sacrificed Numb 19.2 the reason most probably is that such an one is more beautiful and choice such as the Ancients made use of for Sacrifice of which * Plut. Isid Oysr Plutarch says the Aegyptians were so scrupulous that if a Red-Bull had but one black or white Hair he was unfit for Sacrifice And lastly for the Scape-Goat I take that to be an Expiatory Sacrifice purposely designed to be a Type of our blessed Saviour and was expiatory only by relation to his sufferings Phil. For my part I have no great liking to your Types and Figures but why should not these Laws be given in opposition to the Zabii those ancient Idolaters which Learned Men of late have found out and from whose Doctrines methinks they give a pretty handsome Rationale of the Mosaick Laws Cred. Let this Rationale be as pretty as you please I believe it is very false and that there were never any more such a Nation as the Zabii than the Vtopians They never had any more being than in the Dreams of the falsifying Jews who four or five hundred years â—go writ some Sham-Books under their Name I do not doubt but that Maimonides saw them and was imposed upon by them so that the cheat does not lie at his door The Zabii among the ancient Arabians were esteemed a Name for Sorcerers Aul. Gellius Lib. 4. c. 1. or Fortune-Tellers and signified no more than the Chaldaei * Az. 2. in Latin and the Gypsies in English And thus 't is used in the Alchoran †Hist Dyn p. 281. and Abuâ—-Pharajâ—us set out by Dr. Pocock says their Profession was the same with that of the ancient Chaldeans Now should not we make pretty work of it if we should go to give an account of the old Aegyptian rites and customs and the Coprick Language from the lies and cant of our vagrant Gypsies and truly the case is the very same of those Books which Maimonides relies upon that pretend to
give an account of the old Chaldean Idolaters in Abraham's and Moses his time and to be wrote as long ago as that Vid. Maimon More Nevoch Part. III. Cap. 29. Now if these Zabian Books which Maimonides and his Followers so much rely upon prove to be Forgeries then all this Zabian Hypothesis fall to the ground Now these Zabian Books which Maimonides saw were one called Haistamchus another Hattel eshmaoth or of speaking Images another called Tamtam another named Hasscharabh another of the Degrees of the Celestial Orbs and of the Ascendant Figures in each degree another Book of speaking Images a certain Book attributed to Hermes a Book wrote by Isaack the Zabian which disputes for the Law of the Zabians and his great Book of the Customs and Particularities of the Zabians Besides another Book of Agriculture Now is not this a pretty Library of Books for the Abrahamical and Mosaical Times But if they are so ancient as is pretended how came they never to be heard of but among the Jews in Aegypt or Spain about four or five hundred years ago One would have thought that some of the Writers of the Old or New Testament should have spoke of some of them or some of the Learned Fathers who understood the Orientals as St. Jerom and Origen who were so inquisitive this way methinks they should have somewhere mentioned them But to go no further some of these Books carry forgery in their very Titles The Book of speaking Images looks like the stories of the Talismans which the Arabian talks so much of about that time The Book of Celestial Orbs and Ascendants looks like a forgery about Rambam's time when the Follies of Judicial Astrology among the Arabians were at the height But Isaack the Zabian was infatuated to give himself that name pretending to be older than Abraham and yet take his Son's Name Or however his Jewish Name must needs tell all the World he was no Zabian And besides Isaack in his great Book treats of the Temples dedicated by the Zabii to Intellectual Forms whence any body would know the Book to be wrote by some one who had been bred in a School of the Peripatetick Philosophy And the Disputes in those Books about the Eternity of the World shew they were compiled by some one who had been where Aristotle's Arguments upon that subject had been bandied about I should weary you to tell you all the simple Tales which Maimonides quotes of these Books which are all composed in the very strain of the Talmud from whence any body may guess their Original They make Abraham very doughtily disputing with a great King of the Zabians That there is another God besides the Sun and that the Sun is but the Hatchet in the hand of God For which the King claps Abraham up into Prison but notwithstanding that Abraham disputes there still so that the King at last fearing lest Abraham should do mischief among his People by his subtile Disputations seizes all his Goods and banishes him to the further part of the East Now does this look like a Zabian or rather not like a Jew who had a mind to aggrandize the great Parts of his Progenitor Besides the foolishness of that Writer is betrayed by making such great Monarchies in those Ages of the World when Kingdoms were generally confined to Cities or small Provinces as appears by Abraham's fighting half a score of such Kings with 318 Men. The same Books tell you strange Tales of Adam and Seth and Noah c. which plainly shew them to be wrote by one who was acquainted with the Mosaick Genealogy That Adam was the Apostle of the Moon and exhorted Men to her Worship that Seth was a Renegado to his Father's Worship and so was Noah who condemned Image-worship That Adam went into a far Country nigh India and brought home a Tree with Flowers Leaves and Branches of Gold and likewise a Tree of Stone with the Leaves of another green Tree whose Leaves would not burn in the Fire that was so large that ten thousand Men of the bigness of Adam might shelter themselves under it and that the two Leaves which he brought with him were so large that each of them would cloath two Men. But I will tire you no longer with these insipid Talmudical Lies which methinks any body might guess a Jew to be the Author of But however what rare stuff is this to explain Scripture by One would wonder how it should come into the heads of Learned Men to think that God in framing his Sacred Laws should have any regard to such idle Tales For my part I pity them when I see them so sweating themselves in such a silly Enterprise and throwing away so much Labour and Learning to no manner of Purpose and besides the great Advantage they give to the Infidels to expose the Laws of God when they see that Christians settle them upon so slender a foundation Phil. It behoves you to be as zealous for your Religion as you can for you find we get ground upon you every day We live in a very prying Generation and 't is not laying your hand over a sore place in your Religion that will secure it now you must maintain your cause by pure dint of Argument or lose it But what say you now to your great Legislator when we shall prove that all his Celebrated Religion which he pretended to give the Jews from Heaven was only pinched from the Worship of the Heathen Aegyptians And this your own Divines are sensible of at last and by reason of the plain Evidence of the Case have given over the Cause to us For some of them have proved the Christian Religion to be all Jewish and others the Jewish Religion to be derived from the Heathen and therefore for my part I am for taking my Religion at the Fountain head and so will continue a Primitive Heathen in defiance to all innovation I have nothing to say to Christianity for the Judaical Laws are the matter now in hand and these I say were most of them the Ceremonial especially nothing but Aegyptian Rites which Moses brought over with him thence which is a considerable Argument against the Divinity of them for to be sure God Almighty would never have copied his Laws from a parcel of simple Idolaters To begin with Circumcision which is pretended to be the Characteristick of the Jews that to be sure was taken from the Aegyptians or some other Nation that Ceremony being used not only in Aegypt but in Aethiopia by the Colchi and Arabians Thus the Vrim and Thummim was enjoyned in imitation of that Locket of Jewels which hung from the Neck of the Aegyptian High-Priest mentioned by * Hist Fab. Lib. 1. c. 37. Diodorus Siculus The Linnen-Garments which the Jewish High-Priest and other inferiour ones wore were copied from the Aegyptian Priest who wore the like as Herodotus †Herod Hist Lib. 2. c. 37. and Plutarch