Chap. VI. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 377 



Mofes, therefore, was obliged to allow them temples, altars, facri- 

 fices, and all the pomp and Ihow, rites and ceremonies, that were 

 pradlifed in Egypt and in other countries. And our Scripture tells 

 us, that, on account of the hardnefs of their hearts, and their vio- 

 lent propeniity to the idolatry. of other nations, God gave them laws,. 

 which were not good, but to which it was necellary to fubjeft 

 them *. This reafon for the Mofaical religious inftitutions is very 

 well enforced by Spencer, in his moft learned work, De Ltgthus 

 Hebraeorum; where he has fliown, I think, very evidently, that a 

 more fimple religion never could have been adopted by a people, 

 fo grofsly fenfual as the Jews. 



It is this charader of the JewiHi nation, their attachment to the 

 pleafures of the body and the things of this world, without appear- 

 ing to have the leaft idea of a life to come, which, I am perfuaded, 

 was the reafon why that life and /■. mortality^ which was afterwards 

 revealed by our Saviour to them and to all mankind, was no part of 

 the Mofaical religion. If he had preached to them that they were 

 to live after their death, they not only would not have believed him, 

 but it would have difcredlted all the reft: of his dodtrine, as much 

 as the abolifliing the facrifices, and the whole ritual of the Egyp- 

 tians and other Eleathen nations, would have done. Mofes, there- 

 fore, accommodated himfelf in this, as well as in other parts of his 

 legiflation, to the genius of the people, with whom he had to deal, 

 to the hardnejs of their hearts^ and, I think I may add, to the 

 dulnefs of their underftandings f . 1 think, therefore, Biihop War- 



VoL. IV. 3 B burLon 



* ' Becaufe they had not executed my judgments, but had defpifed my ftatutes, and 

 • had polluted my Sabbaths, and their eyes were auer their fathers idols ; Wherefore 

 « I gave them alfo ftatutes that were not good, and judgments whereby they fhould not 

 ' live'. Ezekiel, chap. 20. v. 24. 



•j- Jofephus, contra Ap'wnem, (lib. 2.), tells us that one Apollonlus faid of them, 

 that they were «^iiJT«Toi t** fix^iSx^ai, fke dullej} of all Barbarians ; and that they alone 



had 



