apostasies of this people when they lived under their kings, in the land of Promise, and within sight of their temple. If in the next place we examine, what may be the natural reasons for these three particulars which we find in the Jews, and which are not to be found in any other religion or people, I can, in the first place, attribute their numbers to nothing but their constant employment, their abstinence, their exemption from wars, and above all, their frequent marriages; for they look on celibacy as an accursed state, and generally are married before 10 twenty, as hoping the Messiah may descend from them. The dispersion of the Jews into all the nations of the earth is the second remarkable particular of that people, though not so hard to be accounted for. They were always in rebellions and tumults while they had the temple and holy city in view, for which reason they have often been driven out of their old habitations in the land of Promise. They have as often been banished out of most other places where they have settled, which must very much disperse and scatter a people, and oblige them to seek a livelihood where they can find it. Besides, the whole people is 20 now a race of such merchants as are wanderers by profession, and at the same time are in most, if not all, places incapable of either lands or offices, that might engage them to make any part of the world their home. This dispersion would probably have lost their religion, had it not been secured by the strength of its constitution: for they are to live all in a body, and generally within the same inclosure; to marry among themselves, and to eat no meats that are not killed or prepared their own way. This shuts them out from all table conversation, and the most agreeable intercourses of life; 30 and, by consequence, excludes them from the most probable means of conversion. If, in the last place, we consider what providential reason may be assigned for these three particulars, we shall find that their numbers, dispersion, and adherence to their religion, have furnished every age and every nation of the world with the strongest arguments for the Christian faith, not only as these very particulars are foretold of them, but as they themselves are the depositaries of these and all the other prophecies, which tend to their own confusion. Their number furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of 40 witnesses that attest the truth of the old Bible. Their dispersion spreads these witnesses through all parts of the world. The adherence to their religion makes their testimony unquestionable. Had the whole body of the Jews been converted to Christianity, we should certainly have thought all the prophecies of the Old Testament, that relate to the coming ard history of our blessed Saviour, forged by Christians, and have looked upon them, with the prophecies of the Sibyls, as made many years after the events they pretended to foretel.-O. 10 20 30 When all thy mercies, O my God, O how shall words with equal warmth That glows within my ravish'd heart? Thy Providence my life sustain’d, To all my weak complaints and cries Ere yet my feeble thoughts had learn'd Thine arm unseen convey'd me safe, IO 20 Through hidden dangers, toils, and deaths, And through the pleasing snares of vice, When worn with sickness, oft hast thou Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss Ten thousand thousand precious gifts Nor is the least a cheerful heart, Through every period of my life And after death in distant worlds When nature fails, and day and night My ever grateful heart, O Lord, Through all eternity to thee No. 465. The Confirmation of Faith. * Qua ratione queas traducere leniter ævum: The Supreme Being has made the best arguments for his own 30 existence in the formation of the heavens and earth; and these |