Page images
PDF
EPUB

tinued to demonstrate, that He was her absolute master, and that his will is the only bond, that keeps up the order of the world.

And this was just what men had forgotten the stability of so beautiful an order served now only to persuade them, that that order had ever been, and that it was from itself: by which they were prompted to worship either the world in general, or the stars, the elements, and, in short, all those great bodies which compose it. God hath therefore shewn to mankind a goodness worthy of himself, in reversing, upon remarkable occasions, that order, which not only no longer struck them, because they were accustomed to it, but which even led them, so grossly were they blinded, to imagine eternity and independence elsewhere than in God.

The history of the people of God-attested by its own progression, and by the religion, as well of those who have written it, as of those who have preserved it with so much care-has kept, as in a faithful register, the memory of those miracles, and gives us thereby a true idea of the supreme power of God, the Almighty master of his creatures, either to hold them subject to the general laws he hath established, or to give them others, when he judges it necessary by some surprising stroke to awaken sleeping mankind.

Such is the God, whom Moses has set before us in his writings, as the only one we ought to serve; such is the God, whom the patriarchs worshipped before Moses;

N

[ocr errors]

in a word, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob; to whom our father Abraham was willing to offer up his only son; of whom Melchisedeck, the type of JESUS CHRIST, was high-priest; to whom our father Noah sacrificed, coming out of the ark; whom righteous Abel had acknowledged in offering to him of his most precious substance; whom Seth, given to Adam instead of Abel, had made known to his children, called also the children of God; whom Adam himself had set forth to his descendants as Him by whose hands he had lately been formed, and who alone could put an end to the woes of his unhappy posterity.

O excellent philosoply, which gives us such pure ideas of the author of our being! Excellent tradition, that preserves to us the memory of his glorious works! How holy the people of God, since by an uninterrupted succession, from the foundation of the world to our own days, they have always preserved a tradition and philosophy so holy!

II. Abraham and the Patriarchs.

BUT as the people of God, under the patriarch Abraham, took a more regular form, it is necessary, SIR, to detain you a little concerning that great man.

He was born about three hundred and fifty years after the flood, at a time, when human life, though reduced to narrower limits, was still very long. Noah was but

just dead; Shem his eldest son was yet alive, and Abraham might have passed the greater part of his life with him.

Figure then to yourself the world still new, and still, so to speak, drenched in the waters of the deluge, when men, so near the origin of things, had no occasion, in order to know the unity of God, and the service that was due to him, for any thing but the tradition which had been preserved of it from Adam and Noah: a tradition otherwise so conformable to the light of reason, that one would have thought so clear and important a truth could never have been obscured, or forgotten, among Such is the first state of religion, which continued down to Abraham, when, to know the greatness of God, men had only to consult their reason and memory.

men.

But reason was weak and corrupted, and in proportion as men became further removed from the origin of things, they confounded the ideas they had received from their ancestors. The untoward, or ill-taught children, would no longer believe their decrepid grandsires, whom they scarcely knew after so many generations; human sense, brutalized, could rise no longer to intellectual objects, and men not choosing to worship any thing but what they saw, idolatry diffused itself all over the world.

The spirit, who had beguiled the first man, tasted then the full fruit of his seduction, and beheld the complete effect of his saying, Ye shall be as gods. From the moment he uttered it, he designed to confound,

in man, the idea of God with that of the creature, and to divide a name, the majesty of which consists in being incommunicable. His project succeeded. Men, absorbed in flesh and blood, had, however, preserved an obscure idea of the divine power, which maintained itself by its own strength; but which, blended with the images that entered by their senses, made them worship all things in which there appeared any activity or power. Thus the sun and stars, which made their influence felt at such a distance, the fire and elements, whose effects were so universal, became the first objects of public adoration. Great kings, and conquerors, who were so mighty in the earth, and the authors of inventions useful to human life, had soon after divine honours paid them. Men suffered themselves to be subject to their senses: the senses decided every thing, and made, in spite of reason, all the gods that were adored upon the earth.

How widely distant did man then appear from his first institution! And how was the image of God defaced in him! Could God have made him with those perverse inclinations, that daily declared themselves more and more! Did not that amazing propensity he had to submit to every thing but his natural Lord, show too visibly the strange hand, by which God's workmanship had been so deeply altered in the human mind, that scarce any trace of it could be found? Driven by that blind impression, which swayed him, he plunged himself into idola

try, nor was any thing able to stop him. So great an evil made wonderful progress. But lest it should infect all mankind, and utterly extinguish the knowledge of God, that great God called from on high his servant Abraham, in whose family he meant to establish his worship, and preserve the ancient belief, as well of the creation of the universe, as of the particular providence, with which he governs human things.

Abraham has ever been celebrated in the East. It is not only the Hebrews that look upon him as their father: the Idumeans boast the same original. Ishmael *, the son of Abraham, is known among the Arabians, as the person from whom they sprang. Circumcision is continued with them, as the mark of their origin †, and they have in all times received it, not on the eighth day, after the manner of the Jews, but at their thirteenth year, as, the Scripture informs us, it was given to their father Ishmael; a custom which still prevails among the Mahometans §. Other Arabiannations commemorate Abraham and Keturah, and they are the same the Scripture derives from that marriage. This patriarch was a Chaldean, and those people, famed for

* Gen. xvi. 16.

Joseph. Ant. i. 31. Gen. xvii. 25. § Alex. Polyb. apud Jos. Ant. ii. 61. Beros. Hecat. Eup. Alex, Polyb. & al. apud Jos. ant. 1. 8. & Eus. præp. Ev. ix. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, & xiii. 11. Nic. Damas. lib. iv. Hist. univ. in excerpt. Val. p. 491. & ap. Jos. Ant. 1. viii. & Eus. præp. Ev. ix. 16.

« PreviousContinue »