Vou, VI.J 
How reconcile thefe contradictions ? The 
true God he could not reveal to the He- 
brews ; becaufe they were incapable of 
comprehending his attributes. A fallfe 
ene he chofe net to reveal, out ot {corn 
for criminal artifice. It remained that 
he fhould announce to them his own true 
God, ina fabulous manner. 
He aferibes therefore to his true God 
thofe attributes which coincided with the 
notions of the Hebrews, and their aétual 
wants. He accommodates his Jao to the 
local circumftances, and to the prejudices 
of his people, and thus arifes his Jeho- 
yah. 
In the minds of the people he finds in- 
deed fome belief in divine things; but 
this belief had degenerated into the coarfeft 
fuperftition. The fuperftition he has to 
eradicate, the belief he has to preferve; 
the nature of the fuperftition fuggefts to 
him themeans. According to the gene- 
ral opinion of thefe times, each nation 
was under the guardianfhip of a peculiar 
national God; and it was gratifying to 
national vanity to hear its God lifted up 
above the gods of other nations. The 
divinity of thefe other Gods was not 
thereby denied ; they alfo were recognized, 
but fuppofed, at leaft within the precinéts 
of any national God, to be tecble in com- 
parifon withhim. On this popular error 
Mofes gratified his truth. He made the 
demiurgos of the enlightened into the 
‘national God of the Hebrews; but he 
went one ftep further. 
Not fatished with merely defcribing 
this national God as the molt powerful 
of Gods, he defcribed him as the only 
God, hurling all others into their 
eriginal nothing. He makes him, in- 
deed, an exclufive preperty of the He- 
brews ; but at the fame time fubjeéts 
to himall other nations and al] the powers 
of nature. And thus to the idol which 
he fafhioned for the Hebrews, he attached 
the two moft important attributes of the 
true God, unity and omnipotence, and 
made them the more imprefiive by means 
of this human veil. . 
The childifh vanity of being exclufive 
favourites of the deity was now to operate 
in behalf of truth, and to become a ve- 
hicle for the doctrine of an only God. 
This is, indeed, a new error overthrowing 
an old one; but an error much nearer to 
the truth than that which it overthrew ; 
and to this accompaniment of error the 
truth was in reality indebted for its own 
reception; its diffufron could only be 
obtaii*ed by this forcfeen mifunderitand 
On the Legation of Mofes. 
555 
ing. What could the Hebrews have done 
with a philofophic God? But with this 
national God they could and did do won- 
ders. Reflect a moment on the fituation 
of the Hebrews ; fo ignorant as to efti- 
mate the power of the gods, by the for- 
tune of the nations under their protection. 
Abandoned and oppreffed by men, they 
fuppote themfelves torfaken alfo by all 
the gods. The fame relation which they 
bear to the Egyptians, they fuppofe ta 
fubfift between their God and the gods of 
the Egyptians. He is therefore a {mall 
light befide their lights ; and doubts are 
even entertained if there be any. Allat 
ence it is announced to them, that they 
too have their protector in the hoft of hea- 
ven; that he is awaked from his repofe, 
and his girding himfelf with ftrength te 
make head againft their enemies. 
This annunciation of their God is, 
henceforward, like the call of a general 
to inlift under his victorious banners. 
If this general difplays immediately 
proofs of his might, or has been known 
of old, a giddy enthufiafm will often be 
caught by the moit fearful; and this 
Moles took into confideration. 
The converfation which he helds with 
the apparition in the burnihg buth ex- 
pofes to us the doubts he entertained, and 
the manner in which he anfwered thena 
to himtelf. Will my unhappy country- 
men truft in a God who has fo long ne- 
gleéted them, who at once drops as it were 
from the clouds, whofename they have never 
heard, who for centuries has been an idle 
fpectator of their wrongs? Will they not 
rather confider the Gods of their mighty 
oppreffors as the more powerful? This 
was the next thought that muft occur to 
the prophet, and hew does he meet the 
difficulty? By making his Jao into the 
God of their fathers, by thus affoci- 
ating with his name every marvellous 
national tradiion, and thus making 
him into an old and familiar God. But 
in order to fhow that hereby was meant 
the true and only God, and to prevent all 
confounding of him with the idols of fi - 
perftition, he affigns to him the hallowed 
naime pronounced in the myferies. . I am 
thatl am. Tellthy people Liracl I am 
hath vent thee. 
The divinity really bore this name in 
the myfteries: but to the ftupid Hebrews 
in could not but be unintellizible. It 
conveyed to them no idea; and Mofes 
might have had better fucce’s with fome 
other’name, but he preferred this incon- 
Yenience to endangering his favouiite eb- 
ject, 
