ses, nor indeed from any other part of sacred Scripture, that, before the call of Abraham, mankind had any other evidence of a future state of rewards and punishments, than what was implied in the promise made to Eve, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, and the inference that might have been drawn from the translation of Enoch; and as that evidence did not reclaim the antediluvians from their wickedness, so the remembrance of the deluge itself, together with the renewal of the promise which was undoubtedly made to Noah, had now ceased to retard the degeneracy of mankind after the flood. God, therefore, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, adopted another method of preserving the knowledge of himself, among a race that were running headlong into idolatry, and were too gross and sensual to be reclaimed from the vices with which idolatry hath ever been accompanied, by the promise of rewards, or the threatening of punishments, which were not to take place till after death.

He had promised to Noah, that he would not again destroy, by a flood, the earth with its inhabitants, however wicked they might be. He therefore chose a single family, from which, when multiplied into a great nation under His own immediate government, the rays of divine truth might diverge, as from a centre, among all the other nations, as, in the ordinary course of providence, they should become capable of receiving it; but I must reserve this subject for a future letter.

LETTER X.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH ABRAHAM WAS CALLED FROM HIS FATHER'S HOUSE, AND ON THE STATE OF RELIGION FROM HIS CALL TILL THE GIVING OF THE LAW BY MOSES.

IN my last Letter I have said, that it was to give a check to the progress of idolatry that God chose a single family from which, when increased to a great nation, and placed under his more immediate government, the truth might be gradually diffused over the whole world. There is every reason to believe that idolatry and polytheism took their rise in Chaldea; and it appears to have been before they had spread very far from their source, that Abraham was called by God from Urof the Chaldees to preserve the truth in his own family, and diffuse it through the neighbouring nations. A tradition has long prevailed through the east, and seems to be confirmed by sacred Scripture,* that the an

* Joshua, xxiv. 2.

cestors of Abraham, and even he himself in his youth, had been worshippers of strange or false gods; but how completely he was by his call reclaimed from idolatry is evinced by his whole history. God indeed" knew Abraham, that he would command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord;" and therefore undoubtedly it was, that he might teach that way by his own and his household's example, that he was made to travel through so many countries, without having anywhere a permanent residence of his own. From Ur he travelled to Charan in Mesopotamia ; from Charan to Canaan; and from Canaan into Egypt; and it appears that in his time the knowledge of the true God was not wholly lost in any of these countries, nor his worship completely neglected. It is probable, indeed, that other gods were in most of them associated with the true God; but it is evident, as I have already observed, that even in Canaan there was at least one sovereign who acknowledged no other God than the CREATOR of HEAVEN and EARTH; and we do not read that even the king of Egypt, in Abraham's time, worshipped any other god.

The belief in local or tutelary gods, however, soon became very prevalent; and I am far from being sure that even Abraham's grandson Jacob did not, for some time, lean to that belief. When he vowed that" if the Lord would be with him, and keep him in the way that he was going; and would give him bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that he

might come again to his father's house in peace, then should the Lord be his God," I confess it appears to me in the highest degree probable-not that Jacob called in question the existence of JEHOVAH or his supremacy over all other gods-but that he believed in the existence of inferior gods, to whom was committed the guardianship of particular families, and even of individuals, and that, if he should not return to his father's house in peace, he was prepared to put himself under the protection of one of these gods, and to pay his worship afterwards to him. We know that his relative Laban, to whom he was going, worshipped after gods besides the Creator of Heaven and earth; and the character of Jacob, before he was favoured at Bethel and elsewhere with repeated visions and revelations from the God of his fathers, appears not to have been such as to render it incredible that he should be infected by the prevalent contagion.

The explanation of this vow given by Patrick and most of the commentators can hardly be satis

* Something very similar to this was at one period, and among the less learned of the people still is, very prevalent in the Church of Rome, and perhaps in the Greek Church likewise; where every nation, and many individuals have each their tutelary saints, who are worshipped in subordination to God. When such an abuse crept into the Christian Church, which had the holy Scriptures in her keeping, it need not excite great surprise that, in the age of Abraham, when no such Scriptures existed, the belief of tutelary gods had spread far and wide among the nations, or that even his grandson had some propensity to it.

factory, I should think, to any person; and I have no doubt but that it proceeded from the vain fear that it might be thought derogatory to the wisdom and goodness of God, to suppose that a man so mercenary as, according to the literal sense of the words, Jacob appears to have then been, should have been chosen as one of the heads of that family from which was to spring the Messiah, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed. This fear, however, is groundless, and has its origin in the opinion that the descendants of Abraham, by his grandson Jacob, were promoted to that greatest of all honours for their own sakes, and in reward of their own or their ancestors' merits, than which nothing can be more directly contrary to the doctrine of Scripture.

The Messiah must have sprung from some family, or he could not have been the seed of the woman; the wisdom of God judged it necessary to select one family, in which the knowledge of himself and his truth might be preserved, when all the rest of mankind were running headlong into idolatry, and into all the vices of which idolatry hath always been the prolific parent, and it was surely expedient that the Messiah should be of that family; but it was neither necessary nor expedient that all the members of that family should be exemplary for their piety and virtue, for, if such had been the case, they might have had some reason for saying in their

*See Deut. ix. 4-7.