Heb. ix.

These commands were promulged by the immediate voice of the oracle, recommended in the most solemn manner to the regard and obedience of the Hebrew church. These commands were written on two tables of stone, by the finger of God. The ritual expressly directs, that a rich ark, or chest, should be prepared, in which to put these tables of the law. When these tables were put into the ark, they were to be covered with the richest covering of gold, which was to be called the mercy-seat; and over it were the cherubim of glory, or of the Shechinah, shadowing the mercy-seat. It was to be brought into the most holy place, and become the throne of Jehovah, and seat of his immediate presence in the church.

This was manifestly a part of the ritual; a chief part of the ritual: it manifestly called upon all the members of the Hebrew church to consider their laws of the ten commands, that is, the laws of true piety, righteousness, and goodness, as the principal of all their laws, and of the institution of their covenant with Jehovah; or an Hebrew worshipper who should not regard the ritual of the tables of the covenant, of the ark of the covenant, of the mercyseat, and of the glory of Jehovah over it, might full as well disregard circumcision, sacrifices, purifications, or the holi ness of the altar and temple.

When, for many wise reasons, the Mosaical law was to be a ritual, how wisely were the moral laws incorporated into it, and made so chief a part of it, to make the ritual itself teach the necessity of inward purity, true righteousness, and real goodness, and their preference to any bare rites or ritual actions whatsoever!

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Sanctions of laws are of such use and Rewards advantage to secure obedience, that they and puare usually accounted a good sign of the ments. wisdom of the laws themselves: for, though rewards and punishments do neither properly direct nor oblige, the precept and obligation arising from other reasons; yet they are found, in constant experience, of great use, and in many cases of necessary use, to secure an obedience to laws: so that annexing rewards and punishments to obedience and disobedience, is esteemed a considerable part of public justice, in the administration of government, and, as such, of the justice and righteousness of God, as the supreme Governor of the world.

In laws moral, promulgated by the common light of reason and consciences of all men (Lord Herbert's Notitiæ communes), the sanction is notified by, and together with, the promulgation. For, as good is always right, and evil always wrong, in the reason of God, the Governor of the world, good must always be approved and acceptable to God; evil, on the contrary,

disapproved by him, and displeasing to him. Hence Lord Herbert observes, that from these common principles and notices of reason and conscience, it became a general persuasion, that there were rewards and punishments after this life *. Most nations asserted the doctrine in general, how much soever they differed in particulars, as to their place, or as to their nature and kind. The happiness of the good, and pains of the wicked, is a doctrine expressly taught in the writings of all heathen nations; and it is a doctrine taught implicitly in the immortality of the soul, and the justice of God punishing sins, such sins in particular as were not punished in this life.

It is a very just observation, that the common principles of reason and conscience, confirmed by their natural hopes and fears, from apprehensions of the immortality of their souls, and the righteousness and justice of God, in rewarding good and punishing evil, taught all nations to look for them, and expect them in another world. So that, according to our noble author, the perfections of God, the reasons of good government, the most natural affections of men's minds, formed on the most common and universal principles,

* Est igitur præmium, et poena, notitia communis in quæstione An. licet in quæstione, quid, quale, quantum, quomodo, &c. plurimum disceptetur.-Herbert de Veritate, 281.

taught the sanction as well as the precept and obligation of this universal law; and as a part of the law it was implanted in the conscience, and written on the hearts of men.

If these were principles sufficient to teach all nations, as we find they were in fact, were they not sufficient, think you, to teach them to the Hebrew nation, which, besides the common principles of natural reason and patriarchal tradition, had the assistance of particular revelations to their fathers, Abraham and his family?

The whole idolatry and idolatrous worship of their heathen neighbours supposed the existence of separate spirits; that the souls of their ancestors, of men of eminency while they lived, became gods after death, and were to be worshipped as such. On this supposition they consulted the dead, or the souls of persons deceased, advanced to greater knowledge and higher capacities, now in a state of separate existence *. It seems plain, the Hebrews had the same notions in common with all their neighbours, of the immortality of the soul; though their law and ritual most

* Isis and Osiris were princes of Egypt while they lived, and gods of the Egyptians after their death. Ammon, while he lived, governed Egypt as a king; after his death he was consulted as an oracle, which, for a long time, continued one of the most famous in the world.

wisely guarded against the superstition and idolatry the heathen ran into from an abuse of it.

The prohibition of necromancers, and consulting the dead, supposes a notion of separate spirits, and that they believed the existence of the souls of men after the death of their bodies. What temptation could Saul have had to consult the spirit of Samuel, if he had not believed the separate existence of the Prophet's soul, after his natural death?

There seems, then, to be no need of confirming the doctrines of the soul's immortality, and of the rewards and punishments of another life, consequent upon it, by particular revelation, especially in a ritual law. These doctrines might very wisely be left to the common notions, equally received in the Hebrew nation, as in all the nations of the earth.

The ritual of the Hebrews was a positive law, and had a sanction very fit for such a constitution. The covenant with Abraham promised to make him a family, and increase it into a great nation; to give them the land of Canaan for an inheritance; to bless them, and make them prosperous in the land the Lord their God should give them. This particular covenant with Abraham and his seed, is of different nature and consideration from the general covenant of religion with Noah,