a rational one, and has probability on its fide for is it to be conceived, unless we admit fupernatural affiftance, that persons should rife in the most barbarous and illiterate times, equal for wisdom and abilities to any, that have been known in the most learned? that, in this or that country, should stand forth, of a fudden, a great moralift or philofopher, while all around him was darkness and favageness! Can one conceive, that, once in an age, fuch a one should shoot up, like an aloe among weeds and briars, and that he should thus get the start of his fpecies, and tower so prodigiously above them, on his own strength only! Could nature, or accident, create so vaft a disparity? Could it come merely from different organizations of fenfe and feature? or was it the product of education, while as yet the arts of education were scarce thought of: this is not over-likely.

That these favour'd perfons, therefore, were bleft with heavenly illuminations, in fome mode or measure or other, is a notion very reasonable in itself, and perfectly agreeable likewife to our juftest ideas of an all-good BEING, provident to bring his creation regularly

gularly and gradually to all the excellence, it could rife to.

There are, I know, who have ftrong prejudices to opinions of this fort; yet certainly fuch opinions are of very natural origin, and what plain and common minds can fcarce help falling into the best and wisest, moreover, of the moderns have espoused this way of reasoning, as numbers of the ancients did before them, fome of whom, I believe indeed unjustifiably, yet carried it fo far, as even to think, there never was a truly great man, or perfon endued with a furprizing genius in any way, but who owed it to fome divine inspiration, and was rais'd up by GoD for fome extraordinary purpose of good to mankind.

Early, and at the head of those, who appeared in this high and facred character, were Abraham, Lot, Melchizedec, Job, at least the writer of the book of Job, and others probably, whofe names we have not heard of: Abraham and his fon Ifaac, travelled and fojourned in many lands, where kings were reproved for their fakes, and, by their fortunes, and the bleffings attending them, wrought up to the fear of GOD:

After

After them rofe Hermes, Zoroafter, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Numa, Cyrus, and the feveral great poets, law-givers, and philofophers among the Greeks and Romans.

Thus no poffibility, it feems, was left of another univerfal corruption: mean time, virtue and moral knowledge imperceptibly advanc'd and gain'd ftrength, till, one nation copying from another, and fucceeding times improving on those past, men became at length capable of apprehending the holy truths of GOD and his religion.

TH

CHAP. V.

HE fecond thing, effential in the scheme of Providence, was the keeping the knowledge of the only true God from being wholly loft. This could not probably have been fo well done, as by feparating from the rest of the world a particular people, and training them gradually in that knowledge: for men's propenfity to pluralities of gods was fo natural, and predominant, that they ran into it at once and alike; 'twas the fole habit, or characteristic, in which one nation did not differ from another: fo that if some one had not been selected from the reft, and kept from mingling with them, and imitating their fuperftitions and follies, which they would have done,had they mingled with them, the knowledge of GOD could not have been preferved: contagions cannot be 'fcaped but by flying from the infected.

It

It being neceffary, therefore, that a particular people should be fet apart, and divided from all others, let us go fuccinctly over, and just mark, the several steps, which it pleased GOD to take in order to it, in order both to fet one nation thus apart from the reft, as his peculiar people, and when that was done, to confirm and maintain his true worship and belief among them.

It was not long after the deluge, ere men's minds were clouded and darkned, and their original apprehenfions and ideas of GOD almoft quite extinguished: idolatry, like a fecond deluge, had pour'd itself through the lands; it had got footing even among the elder branch of Shem, and that, while Noah himself was still living, and they had his example and authority before their eyes. In this conjuncture, the time precisely, that fuch a step was required, Abraham is called; a man of virtuous and good difpofitions, and of the tenth generation, or thereabouts, from Noah: he is fent forth, with all his fubftance, from his own country to another: GOD promises him an offspring, by his wife Sarah, in their old age, and to make a great nation of him; promifes alfo the land of Canaan