marks) among all the heathens, and especially in the time of Moses, HUMAN SACRIFICES were considered as the most acceptable to the Gods: but in the laws of Moses, nothing is mentioned with greater abhorrence; and it is expressly declared to have been a principal cause of the expulsion of the idolatrous inhabitants of Canaan. The right of the Divine Being to claim such sacrifices is intimated by the command to sacrifice Isaac, but it was declined, and a ram substituted in his place. Also, when the Divine Being claimed the first-born of all the Israelites, in the place of those of the Egyptians which were destroyed, none of them were sacrificed, but the service of the Levites was accepted instead of them: and whereas there were not Levites enow for that purpose, the rest were redeemed by the sacrifice of brute animals, which evinced the determination of the Divine Being, in no case to accept of that of men."

He finishes the entire disquisition by saying, "It may now, surely, be concluded from this general view of the subject, that the two systems, viz. that of Moses, and that of the heathens, were not derived from each other: and the superiority of that of Moses is so great, that considering his circumstances and those of his nation at the time, we cannot err in pronouncing, that THEY COULD NOT HAVE HAD ANY HUMAN, BUT MUST HAVE HAD A DIVINE origin. Nor can

any thing be said of Mr. Langles and others who assert that the books of Moses were copied, or in any other way derived, from the works of other Eastern nations, more favourable than that they had never read them.”*

Such is Dr. Priestley's opinion upon the subject, on which Dr. Geddes comforts himself with having the unanimous suffrage of the learned in his favour. In truth the absurdity of Dr. Geddes's notions on this subject, exposed as they have so frequently been when advanced by other infidel writers, (for with such I must beg leave to class this Catholic translator of the " BOOKS HELD SACRED,") I should not have deemed entitled to any specific refutation, but I could not resist the opportunity of confronting him with a brother critic, equally removed from the trammels of received opinions, and equally intrepid in exercising the right of free enquiry in the face

* A Dissertation in which are demonstrated the Originality and superior Excellence of the MOSAIC INSTITUTIONS, contained in Dr. Priestley's Notes on all the Books of Scripture, vol. i. p. 373-400. See also the preface, p. xii. in which Dr. P. uses these words: "The divine mission of Moses and that of Jesus are inseparably connected; and the religion of the Hebrews and that of the Christians are parts of the same scheme; so that the separation of them is impossible. That Dr. Geddes, and some others, should have been of a different opinion, appears to me most ex. traordinary."

of whatever consequences might result.-When Greek meets Greek

There is another writer also, for the purpose of confronting whose opinions with those of Dr. Priestley I have been the more desirous of making the foregoing extracts from this author's Dissertation: and that is no other than Dr. Priestley himself. Whoever will be at the trouble of perusing his positions relative to sa crifices contained in Number V. of this work; and also his observations on their origin alluded to in the Number which follows this, will have no small reason to be surprized at the orthodox complexion of the arguments which have just been cited. For the striking inconsistency which will present itself upon such a comparison, it may not perhaps be difficult to account. I am willing (and with much satisfaction in the reflexion) to believe, that, as Dr. Priestley approached the close of life, and was enabled by being withdrawn from the fermentation of controversy and party to view these awful subjects with the calmness, deliberation and seriousness which they demand, his religious opinions might have undergone some change, and made some approach to that soberer interpretation of Scripture which at an earlier period he had with almost unaccountable pertinacity resisted. I think, I discover strong signs of this in the comparative moderation of his last work Notes C

VOL. II.

.

1

on all the books of Scripture; but especially in the Dissertation on the Originality and superior Excellence of the Mosaic Institutions, from which I have made the foregoing quotations; and which, (although I cannot concur in the entire of its contents,) I would strongly recommend, as containing a judicious summary of the internal evidence of the divine origin of the Mosaic institutions.

NO. XLVIII.

SACRIFICES EXPLAINED AS GIFTS

BY VARIOUS WRITERS.

PAGE 43. (*)

-Spencer maintains this the ory of sacrifice: De Leg. Hebr. lib. iii. diss. ii. cap. 3. sect. 1, 2. pp. 762, 763. Mr. Coventry, in the 5th discourse of his Philem. and Hydasp. pp. 91, 92. 108, 109. adopts the same idea, clothing it, in his manner, with circumstances tending to disparage and vilify the entire rite, The author of the Scripture Account of Sacrifices proposes, what he deems a different theory; but which is distinguished from this, by a line so faint, as scarcely to be discerned. Religious gifts, he says, should be kept carefully distinct from gifts weakly presented to God, as men would offer gifts to one another: and He explains sacrifices to be "sacred gifts, of things received first from God, and presented back to him for

an external expression of gratitude, acknowledg ment, faith and every pious sentiment." (p. 78 --82. and Postsc. p. 21.) This notion, however, seems to have no just connexion with any species of sacrifice, but the eucharistic. And however the sentiment of gratitude might have led to an offering of things inanimate, it could not have suggested the idea of the slaying of an animal, as was done by Abel at the beginning. Besides, this notion of sacrifice includes the idea of praperty, and is consequently not conceivable, without admitting an actual experience of the gra-, tifying effect produced by gifts upon men: and thus it falls under the objection urged in Number LI. against the idea of gifts in general.

Dr. Priestley has adopted a similar theory, asserting that sacrifices arose from anthropomorphitical notions of God, and are to be considered originally as gifts of gratitude. Like the last named author, he endeavours to support his notion, from the practice of gifts of homage to great persons in early times; and like him, he considers of course an offering for sin, as differing in no respect from any other sort of oblation. The progress of the rite of sacrifice, as growing out of the notion of gifts, he has traced in a circumstantial and elaborate detail, (Th. Rep. vol. i. p. 195-201.) which, whoever wishes to be convinced of the utter improbability of the theory