the Spirit of God, he is brought to renounce his own wisdom, and to abhor himself in dust and ashes. It is very certain, from all the light that can be obtained from history, that the five books of Moses were written by him, in his life time; during the actual existence of thousands who had come with him through the wilderness; who had been eye and ear witnesses of most, if not of all the miracles that he records. The young people among them, afterwards actually possessed the land of Canaan, promised to their fathers many hundred years before, viz. by God himself to Abraham, and afterwards by Moses to them in the land of Egypt-their descendants enjoyed it upwards of fifteen hundred years, and lost it again, according to the express predictions of this same Moses, while yet in the wilderness. He also foretold them of events which should take place among them, especially relative to their wickedly desiring a king to rule over them, in imitation of the nations around them, hundreds of years after his death; and also that the Lord would raise up another prophet, to whom they should finally hearken, which has been accordingly doneand some of those events are fulfilling even at this day. To us who have seen the completion of the awful prediction, one would have imagined no argument would have been wanting to authenticate the divine mission of the leader of the tribes of Israel, after attending to this solemn declaration of Moses, so many thousand years before it came to pass. "And the Lord said unto Moses, behold thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and this people will rise up and go a whoring after the Gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant, which I have made with them. Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured; and many evils and troubles shall befall them, so that they will say in that day, are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us-and I will surely hide my face in that day, for all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they have turned unto other Gods."* Let the last address of the successor of this man of God, to the people whom he had conducted, from the death of Moses to the complete possession of the promised land, being a space of twenty-eight years, have some effect in the proof of the divine mission of his great predecessor, being founded on the personal knowledge of every one to whom he spake; "behold this day I am going the way of all the earth, and ye know in all know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things, which the Lord your God spake concerning you; all are come to pass unto you and not one thing hath failed thereof."+ This address he prefaces with," Be ye very courageous to keep and to do all that is written in the book of the law of Moses," and then he proceeds to enumerate the special miracles that had been performed in their favour, repeating all the remarkable instances recorded by Moses from his first application to Pharaoh to their passing over Jordan. So that if there was any design in Moses to deceive the people, his suc * Deut. 31st chap. 16-18. t Josh. 23.-14. ‡ Josh. 23.-6. cessor must have combined with him to carry on the deception, and that at the moment of his dissolution. It must be acknowledged that hitherto, we have considered these historical facts as evidences in favour of Moses, principally as related by himself, and extracted from his own writings: but since these were written for the instruction of and a memorial to the people themselves, among whom all the transactions related, were performed, and who were fully capable of determining on their truth or falsehood; and who with their posterity to this day, set their seals to the truth of them;* to which may be added, the actual fulfilment of the many predictions contained in them, they must receive great additional weight of testimony, so as to command the belief of every candid inquirer after truth. "The writings of the prophets bear plain signatures of their divine authority. Examine the books of the Greek and Roman sages, and observe what discordant opinions they contain on almost every point of theology and philosophy; but in the Hebrew prophets there is a wonderful harmony of doctrine for above one thou. sand years, unparalleled in the writings of any other The pentateuch is the great repository of the most remote antiquities, religion, polity, and literature of the Jewish nation; to which, in all their posterior writers, there is a constant reference or allusion. To them the righteous judge, the reforming prince, the admonishing priest, the menacing prophet, perpetually and uniformly appealed: on them the historiographer, the orator, the poet, and the philosopher, endeavoured to form their respective styles: and to rival the language of the pentateuch was, even in the most felicitous periods of their state, considered as the highest effort of Hebrew genius. Preface to Geddes transl. of the Pentateuch, fol. 1. ૨૧ country. History teaches us, that a great number of their prophecies have been accomplished; and we know that some of them are accomplishing at this day."* But if we examine into the records of profane History, we shall find much to support the faith of the servant of God with regard to the leading facts of the Mosaic pentateuch. Profane historians who mention Moses, and his character, seem to be in part acquainted with his education, his military exploits and his miracles, especially those plagues he brought on Egypt, and consider him as a famous magician. In addition to what has already appeared herein, as the attestation of heathen authors to the character of Moses, he is universally considered by them as a great lawgiver, as is testified by Diodorus Siculus who says, that Moses received his laws from the God Jao. His fine form and consummate wisdom are mentioned by Trogus Pompeius,‡ and he takes notice of Moses's success against the Ethiopians, who had invaded the territories of Pharaoh. Trogus was the first of the Latin historians, and attributes the prosperous and flourishing circumstances of the Jewish state to a mixture of justice with religion in their government. He gives a high character of Joseph and mentions his being sold by his brethren * An attempt towards an approved versn. of the 12 minor prophets, page 5 of preface. Diodorus Siculus in his 1st book says "among the Jews, was Moses who called God by the name of Jao (meaning Jehovah), signifying ex istence. Justin, lib. 36. chap. 2. to foreign merchants through envy, who carried him into Egypt, where he soon became dear to the king. That Joseph was the first who understood the interpretation of dreams, and foretold a famine many years before it happened, and preserved Egypt, by advising the king to provide stores of corn against the time of need; and that there had been so much expe rience of the truth of his answers, that they seem to be given rather by God than man.* Artepanus says Moses was commander of the Egyptian forces against the Ethiopians, during a ten years wart-yet on this subject we find Moses totally silent, but he does not forget to record his killing the Egyptian. Numenius, the Pythagorean, says, "That Jannes and Iambres, the chief of the magicians of Egypt, by their sorceries, withstood Moses the leader of the Jews, a man most powerful in his prayers to God." And when speaking expressly of the Hebrew lawgiver, he says, "What is Plato, but Moses conversing in the language of Athens."§ Diodorus and Herodotus, take notice of the terrible scourges brought on the Egyptians by Moses. The former, who lived in the time of Julius and Augustus Cæsar, and wrote the histories of Egypt, Persia, Syria, &c. also mentions, "That the Troglodites, the indigenous inhabitants of the place, (where Moses crossed the Red Sea) had a tradition from father to son, from their very early and remote ages, that once a division of the sea did happen there; and * Reas. of Christ. 99. † Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. 9. ch. 27. § Clem. Alex. Strom. lib. 1. page 411. |