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Hebrew nation out of Egypt, conducted them through the wilderness, planted them in the land of Canaan, regulated their government, distributed their possessions, and to which alone they could look to obtain new blessings, or secure those already enjoyed. From all this I derive another presumptive argument for the divine authority of the Mosaic Code; and I contend, that a moral system thus perfect, promulgated at so early a period, to such a people, and enforced by such sanctions as no human power could undertake to execute, strongly bespeaks a divine original.

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LECTURE III.

The Penal Code of the Jewish Law conformable to its moral and religious system. Capital crimes. Idolatry, and the various crimes connected with it. Strict prohibition of human sacrifices. Supplementary sanctions, pre-supposing a special Providence. Jewish constitution a Theocracy. Severity against idolatry justified. Jewish Law Disobedience to parents how prohibits all impurity-yet not unnaturally austere. punished. Wisdom of the Mosaic Law, respecting murder and manslaughter-with respect to slavery—and false witnesses. Principle of retaliation explained. Equity of punishment for the invasion of property. Mildness of Laws towards slaves. Form of trial.

Consistence of the Religious and Penal Code.

EXODUS, xxi. 14.

"If a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour, to slay him with guile : thou shalt take him from mine altar, that he may die."

In the last Lecture we reviewed the Moral Precepts of the Jewish Law, and the practical tendency of the Jewish Ritual; which appeared worthy of that divine original to which they are ascribed. But these religious commands and general principles of morality, however useful and important, could not alone be sufficient to form the character, and regulate the conduct of the nation, if unsupported by civil laws. And as the entire constitution of the Jews, civil and religious, was attributed to the same divine authority; in order to show it was not unworthy of such a sacred origin, it is necessary to examine how far the PENAL CODE* of the Jewish Law was conformable to the principles of its religious system, and the moral instructions of its Legislator.

In examining the Mosaic penal code, we find that at the head of its capital crimes was placed IDOLATRY.† Not only the act itself, but every attempt to seduce men to it, and every mode of conduct which presupposed or obviously led to it. Against this offence the strictest rigour was exercised: no partiality for the dearest relative was to induce concealment ; no dignity to silence

* Consult on this subject Maimonides More Nevochim, Pars III. cap. xli.; and Spencer's Dissertatio de Theocratia Judaica, præcipue cap. vi. p. 204. + Vide Maimonides More Nevochim, cap. xxxii.

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accusation; no multitude of offenders to deter from punishment. "If (says the Lawgiver) thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy "friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly saying, "Let us go and serve other gods; thou shalt not consent unto "him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, "neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him but "thou shalt surely kill him: thine hand shall be first upon him. "to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. "And if thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, Certain men, "the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and "have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us "go and serve other gods, then shall ye enquire, and ask dili"gently; and behold if it be truth, and the thing certain, that "such abomination is wrought among you; thou shalt smite the "inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying "it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with "the edge of the sword. And thou shalt gather all the spoils "of it into the midst of the street thereof; and shalt burn with "fire the city, and all the spoil thereof, every whit, for the "Lord thy God; and it shall be an heap for ever, it shall never "be built again."*

One species of idolatry is marked with peculiar abhorrence, that of giving their seed unto Moloch, or burning their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods. This the Deity directs to be punished with death. If the punishment is neglected, he denounces that he will himself execute vengeance, as well on the offender, as those who designedly suffered him to escape with impunity thus MARKING WITH PECULIAR ABHORRENCE THE EXECRABLE CUSTOM OF HUMAN SACRIFICES, † which to the disgrace of reason and humanity, so long polluted the earth even in nations and periods which we are accustomed to honour with the epithets of enlightened and civilized. Any imitation of such horrid rites in the worship of the true God, the Law thus expressly forbids: “When the Lord thy God shall cut off the nations from before "thee, take heed to thyself that thou enquire not after their gods

* Deut. xiii. 6, &c.

+ Vide Jewish Letters to Voltaire, part III. Let. vi. Vol II. p. 68; and Findlay's Answer to Voltaire, Part II. ch. ii. sect. vi. and vii. p. 137; and Doddridge, Lect. xlviii. sect. 8. Vide supra, Part II. Lect. I. pp. 195, 196.

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saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I "do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God: "for every abomination to the Lord which he hateth have they "done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters "have they burnt in the fire to their gods."*

On the same principle of preserving the allegiance due to the supreme Jehovah, resorting or pretending to resort to supernatural agency, in order to discover or to control future events, as it implied a dependence on inferior spirits, was a violation of allegiance to the true and only God, who declared himself the peculiar guardian of this people, ever ready to assist them in any distress, and communicate to them any necessary information as to futurity, when piously and humbly consulted according to the regulations of his Law. Hence those who had (as they asserted or supposed) familiar spirits, those who practised enchantments or witchcraft, were to be punished with death.

On the same principle, the blasphemer, and the deliberate presumptuous sabbath-breaker,‡ and the false prophet, as they openly shook off all reverence for the great Jehovah, were also to suffer death.

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* Deut. xii. 29, &c-Compare with this text the energy with which. Jeremiah, vii. 29-34, reprobates the Jews for transgressing its prohibition: "The Lord," (says the Prophet) "hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. For the chil"dren of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord: they have set their abomi"nations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it. And they have built "the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, TO BURN 66 THEIR SONS AND THEIR DAUGHTERS IN THE FIRE; WHICH I COMMANDED THEM NOT, NEITHER CAME IT INTO MY HEART. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the "Lord, that it shall no more be called Tophet, nor the valley of the son of Hinnom, 'but, The valley of slaughter: for they shall bury in Tophet, till there be no place. "And the carcases of this people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the "beasts of the earth; and none shall fray them away. Then will I cause to cease "from the cities of Judah, and from the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of mirth, and "the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride; for the "land shall be desolate." Yet, notwithstanding the direct prohibition of the legislator, the condemnation of the Prophet, and the interposition of Providence to punish the offering of human sacrifices, infidel writers, particularly Voltaire, have had the hardihood to charge the Mosaic Law with demanding, or at least permitting them. How unreasonably, vide the works referred to in the last note.

+Vide Numbers ix. 7 and 8, and xxvii. 21. compared with Joshua ix. 14. Judges i. 1. and 2 Sam. v. 23. And consult Lowman on the Civil Government of the Hebrews, ch. xi.; and Spencer's Dissertatio Septimă de Urim et Thummim.

Vide Numbers xvi. 32. Deut. xvii. 12, and xviii. 20.

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In other cases of disobedience, proceeding from similar disregard to the Divine Authority, but not manifesting itself by acts so plainly cognizable by human tribunals, the Legislator denounces, "That the perpetrators should bear their iniquity, and "should be cut off from their people :" that is, God would either cut them off from the communion of his people, and all the advantages of that covenant he had entered into with them; or he would interfere, and punish their crime by a supernatural and premature death. Thus, "if a man hide his eyes from him "who giveth his seed unto Moloch, and kill him not; then will "I set my face against that man" says the Lord, "and against “his family, and will cut him off."* The Lord also threatens to cut off the man who did not afflict his soul on the great day of atonement:† the man who did not celebrate the Passover, or who broke its solemn regulations: these, and other actions or omissions, not easily discoverable by, or proveable before human tribunals,‡ are prohibited under a similar penalty. An equally special interference of Providence, for the detection and punishment of guilt, is implied in the trial by the waters of jealousy,|| and in the penalty denounced against particular acts of impurity; that the perpetrators of them should bear their iniquity, and § die childless.

* Lev. xx. first five verses.

† Lev. xxiii. 29, 30. also Exod. xxxi. 14. u une violation of the Sabbath; Numbers xv. 30. of the presumptuous offender; Numbers xix. 13, of him who defiled the tabernacle; Lev. xviii, and xx. of unnatural crimes; also Numbers xix. 20. Lev. xxii. 3, and Exod. xii. 15 and 19.

Vide, on the reasons of such of these precepts as relate to actions of a less criminal nature, Maimonides More Nevochim, Pars III. cap. xli. p. 463; and for others, cap. xxxvii. p. 447, where he notices that the prohibition, Lev. xix. 27, against rounding the corner of the hair on the head and the beàrd, was given because the idolatrous priests were accustomed to use that particular tonsure. He assigns a similar reason for the precept of not using a garment of linen and woollen mixed together, Lev. xix. 19, this being a particular dress in idolatrous rites; and for the precept, Deut. xxii. 5, that the woman should not wear the dress of a man, or vice versa. Besides its obvious tendency to preserve modesty and purity of manners, Maimonides observes, that a man dressed in a coloured female dress in honour of Venus, and a woman dressed in armour worshipping at the shrine of the statue of Mars.

|| Numbers, ch. v.-It has been well remarked, that this species of ordeal could not injure the innocent at all, or punish the guilty except by a miracle; while, in the ordeals by fire, &c., in the dark ages, the innocent could scarcely escape, but by a miracle.

§ Levit, xx. 20.

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