really in the same Josephus, which spake in a lower manner of him, which could be hardly any other passage than this testimony before us; and since as we have also seen, when he speaks of the Jewish History of Justus of Tiberias, as infected with the prejudices of the Jews in taking no manner of notice of the advent, of the acts, and of the miracles of Jesus Christ, while yet he never speaks so of Josephus himself, this most naturally implies also, that there was not the like occasion here as there; but that Josephus had not wholly omitted that advent, those acts, or miracles which yet he has done everywhere else, in the books seen by Photius, as well as Justus of Tiberias, but in this famous testimony before us, so that it is most probable, Photius not only had this testimony in his copy, but believed it to be genuine also.

XI. As to the silence of Clement of Alexandria, who cites the Antiquities of Josephus, but never cites any of the testimonies now before us, it is no strange thing at all, since he never cites Josephus but once, and that for a point of chronology only, to determine how many years had passed from the days of Moses to the days of Josephus, so that his silence may almost as well be alleged against a hundred other remarkable passages in Josephus's works as against these before us.

XII. Nor does the like silence of Tertullian imply that these testimonies, or any of them, were not in the copies of his age. Tertullian never once hints at any treatises of Josephus but those against Apion, and that in general only, for a point of chronology; nor does it any way appear that Tertullian ever saw any of Josephus's writings besides, and far from being certain that he saw even those. He had particular occasion in his dispute against the Jews to quote Josephus, above any other writer, to prove the completion of the prophecies of the Old Testament in the destruction of Jerusalem and miseries of the Jews at that time, of which he there discourses, yet does he never once quote him upon that solemn occasion; so that it seems to me that Tertullian never read either the Greek Antiquities of Josephus, or his Greek books of the Jewish wars: nor is this at all strange in Tertullian, a Latin writer, that lived in Africa, by none of which African writers is there any one clause, that I know of, cited out of any of Josephus's writings; nor is it worth my while in such numbers of positive citations of these clauses, to mention the silence of other later writers as being here of very small con

sequence.

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SINCE this command of God to Abraham (Gen. xxii) has of late been greatly mistaken by some, who venture to reason about very ancient facts from very modern notions, and this without a due regard to either the customs, or opinions, or circumstances of the times whereto those facts belong, or indeed to the true reasons of the facts themselves; since the mistakes about those customs, opinions, circumstances and reasons, have of late so far prevailed, that the very same action of Abraham, which was so celebrated by St. Paul (Rom. iv. 16-25), St. James (chap. ii. 21, 22), the author to the Hebrews (chap. xi. 17-19), Philo,* and Josephus,† in the first century, and by innumerable others since, as an uncommon instance of signal virtue, of heroic faith in God, and piety towards him; nay, is in the sacred history (Gen. xxii. 15-18) highly comInended by the divine Angel of the Covenant, in the name of God himself, and promised to be plentifully rewarded; since this command, I say, is now at last, in the eighteenth century, become a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence among us, and that sometimes to persons of otherwise good sense, and of a religious disposition of mind also, I shall endeavour to set this matter in its true, i. e. in its ancient and original light, for the satisfaction of the inquisitive. In order whereto we are to consider, 1. That till this very profane age, it has been, I think, universally allowed by all sober persons, who owned themselves the creatures of God, that the Creator has a just right over all his rational creatures, to protract their lives to what length he

pleases,-to cut them off when and by what instruments he pleases,-to afflict them with what sicknesses he pleases-and to remove them from one state or place in this his great palace of the universe to another, as he pleases; and that all those rational creatures are bound in duty and interest to acquiesce under the divine disposal, and to resign themselves up to the good providence of God in all such his dispensations towards them. I do not mean to intimate, that God may, or ever does, act in these cases after a mere arbitrary manner, or without sufficient reason, believing, according to the whole tenor of natural and revealed religion, that he hateth nothing that he hath made (Wisdom, xi. 14); that whatsoever he does, how melancholy soever it may appear at first sight to us, is really intended for the good of his creatures, and at the upshot of things, will fully appear so to be: but that still he is not obliged, nor does in general give his creatures an account of the particular reasons of such his dispensations towards them immediately, but usually tries and exercises their faith and patience, their resignation and obedience, in their present state, of probation, and reserves those reasons to the last day, the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. (Rom. ii. 5.)

2. That the entire histories of the past ages, from the days of Adam till now, show that Almighty God has ever exercised his power over mankind, and that without giving them an immediate account of the reasons of such his conduct; and that withal, the best and wisest men of all ages, Heathens as well as Jews and Christians,-Marcus Antoninus,

as was this his readiness to offer up his only begot ten son Isaac, was now first promised, and has been long ago performed in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of David, the son of Abraham (Matt. i. 1), which highly deserves our observation in this place; nor can we suppose that any thing else than clear conviction that this command came from God could induce so good a man and so tender a father as Abraham was, to sacrifice his own beloved son, and to lose thereby all the comfort he received from him at present, and all the expectation he had of a numerous and happy posterity from him hereafter. 4. That long before the days of Abraham, the demons or heathen gods had required and received hunan sacrifices, and particularly that of the offerer's own children, and this both before and after the Deluge. This practice had been indeed so long left off in Egypt, and the custom of sacrificing animals there, was confined to so few kinds in the days of Herodotus, that he would not believe they had ever offered human sacrifices at all; for he says,* that "the fable, as if Hercules was sacrificed to Jupiter in Egypt, was feigned by the Greeks, who were entirely unacquainted with the nature of the Egyptians and their laws; for how should they sacrifice men, with whom it is unlawful to sacrifice any brute beast, boars and bulls, and pure calves and ganders only excepted ?" However, it is evident from Sanchoniatho, Manetho, Pausanias, Diodorus, Siculus, Philo, Plutarch, and Porphyry, that such sacrifices were frequent both in Phoenicia and Egypt, and that long before the days of Abraham, as Sir John Marsham and Bishop Cumberland have fully proved; nay, that in other places (though not in Egypt) this cruel practice continued long after Abraham, and this till the very third, if not also to the fifth century of Christianity, before it was quite abolished. Take the words of the original authors in English, as most of them occur in their originals, in Sir John Marsham's Chronicon, p. 76-78, 300 -304.

"Chronus offered up his only-begotten son as a burnt-offering, to his father Uranus, when there was a famine and a pestilence."+

"Chronus, whom the Phoenicians name Israel

[it should be Il], and who was, after his death, consecrated into the star Saturn, when he was king of the country, and had by a nymph of that country, named Anobret, an only begotten son, whom, on that account, they called Jeud, (the Phoenicians to this day calling an only begotten son by that name), he in his dread of very great dangers that lay upon the country from war, adorned his son with royal apparel, and built an altar, and offered him in sacrifice."+

"The Phoenicians, when they were in great dangers by war, by famine, or by pestilence, sacrificed to Saturn one of the dearest of their people, whom they chose by public suffrage for that purpose; and Sanchoniatho's Phoenician history is full of such sacrifices." [These hitherto I take to have been before the Flood.]§

"In Arabia, the Dumatii sacrificed a child every year." ||

"They relate, that of old the [Egyptian] kings sacrificed such men as were of the same colour with Typho, at the sepulchre of Osiris."¶

Manetho relates, that they burnt Typhonean

• Apud Marsh. Chron. p. 303. t Phil. Elo. ex Sanchon. p. 70. Ph, Bib, ex Sanchon, p. 77.

Porphyry, p. 77. Porphyry, p. 77. Diod. Sie. p. 78.

men alive in the city Idithyia [or Ilithyia], and scattered their ashes like chaff that is winnowed; and this was done publicly, and at an appointed season in the dog days."

"The barbarous nations did a long time admit of the slaughter of children, as of a holy practice, and acceptable to the gods; and this thing, both private persons, and kings, and entire nations, practise at proper seasons."++

"The human sacrifices that were enjoined by the Dodonean oracle, mentioned in Pausanias's Achaics, in the tragical story of Coresus and Calirrhoe, sufficiently intimate that the Phoenician and the Egyptian priests had set up this Dodonean oracle before the time of Amosis, who destroyed that barbarous practice in Egypt."‡‡

Isque adytis hæc tristia dicta reportat:
Sanguine placastis ventos, et virgine casa,
Cum primum Iliacas Danai venistit ad orda:
Sanguine quærendi reditus, animaque litandum
Argolica

VIRG. En. i. 115,

He from the gods this dreadful answer brought O Grecians, when the Trojan shores you sought, Your passage with a virgin's blood was bought! So must your safe return be bought again,

And Grecian blood once more atone the main.

DRYDES.

These bloody sacrifices were, for certain, instances of the greatest degree of impiety, tyranny, and cruelty in the world: that either wicked demons or wicked men, who neither made nor preserved mankind, who had therefore no right over them, nor were they able to make them amends in the next should, after so inhuman a manner, command the world for what they thus lost or suffered in this, taking away the lives of men, and particularly of of any crime; this was, I think, an abomination dethe offerer's own children, without the commission ginning (John viii. 44); a crime truly and properly rived from him who was a murderer from the be

diabolical.

5. That accordingly Almighty God himself, under the Jewish dispensation, vehemently condemned the Pagans, and sometimes the Jews themselves, for this crime; and for this, among other heinous sins, cast the idolatrous nations (nay, sometimes the Jews too) out of Palestine. Take the principal Testament :texts hereto relating, as they lie in order in the Old

"Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech. Defile not yourselves in any of these things, for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you," &c. (Lev. xviii.

21.)

"Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death; the people of the land shall stone him with stones." (Lev. xx. 2.)

by following the nations, after that they be destroyed "Take heed to thyself, that thou be not snared from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve. their gods, even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt nation of the Lord, which he hateth, have they done not do so unto the Lord thy God; for every abomidaughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods." unto their gods; for even their sons and their (Deut. xii. 30, 31. See chap. xviii. 10, and 2 Kings xvii. 17.)

"And Ahaz made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom

the Lord cast out before the children of Israel." (2 Kings xvi. 3.)

Moreover, Ahaz burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children (his son, in Josephus) in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel." (2 Chron. xxviii. 3.)

"And the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anamelech, the gods of Sepharvaim," &c. (2 Kings xvii. 31.)

"And Josiah defiled Tophet, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire unto Molech." (2 Kings xxiii. 10.)

"Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons; and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with blood." (Psal. cvi. 37, 38. See Isa. lvii. 5.)

"The children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name to pollute it; and they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of innom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I commanded them not, nor came it into my heart." (Jer. vii. 30-32.)

"Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, Behold I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle, be cause they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burnt incense unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents. They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt-offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind," &c. (Jer. xix. 3—5.)

"They built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech, which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin." (Jer. xxxii. 35.)

"Moreover, thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast born unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?" (Ezek. xvi. 20, 21. See chap. xx. 26; 1 Cor. x. 20.)

"Thou hatest the old inhabitants of thy holy land, for doing most odious works of witchcraft and wicked sacrifices; and also those merciless murderers of children, and devourers of man's flesh, and feasts of blood, with their priests, out of the midst of their idolatrous crew, and the parents that killed with their own hands souls destitute of help.”— (Wisd. xii. 4-6.)

6. That Almighty God never permitted, in any one instance, that such a human sacrifice should actually be offered to himself (though he had a right to have required it, if he had so pleased) under the whole Jewish dispensation, which yet was full of many other kinds of sacrifices, and this at a time when mankind generally thought such sacrifices of the greatest virtue for the procuring pardon of sin

and the divine favour. This the ancient records of the heathen world attest. Take their notion in the words of Philo Biblius,* the translator of Sanchoniatho :-"It was the custom of the ancients, in the greatest calamities and dangers, for the governors of the city or nation, in order to avert the destruction of all, to devote their beloved son to be slain, as a price of redemption to the punishing [or aveng ing] demons; and those so devoted were killed after a mystical manner." This the history of the king of Moab (2 Kings iii. 27), when he was in great distress in his war against Israel and Judali, informs us of; who then "took his eldest son, that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt-offering upon the city-wall." This also the Jewish prophet Micah (chap. vi. 6—8) implies, when he inquires, "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old! Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, and ten thousands of fat kids of the goats? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" No, certainly; "For he hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to humble thyself to walk with thy God ?"

me.

It is true, God did here try the faith and obedience of Abraham to himself, whether they were as strong as the Pagans exhibited to their demons or idols, yet did he withal take effectual care, and that by a miraculous interposition also, to prevent the execution, and provided himself a ram, as a vicarious substitute, to supply the place of Isaac immediately :-" And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham, and said Abraham, Abraham !—and he said, Here am I -and he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold a ram caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son." (Gen. xxii. 11-13.) Thus though Jephtha (Judg. xi. 36-39,) has, by many, been thought to have vowed to offer up his daughter and only child for a sacrifice, and that as bound on him, upon supposition of his vow, by a divine law (Levit. xxvii. 28, 29), of which I was once myself; yet upon more mature consideration, I have, for some time, thought this to be a mistake, and that his vow extended only to her being devoted to serve God at the tabernacle, or elsewhere, in a state of perpetual virginity; and that neither that law did enjoin any human sacrifices, nor do we meet with any example of its execution in this sense afterwards. Philo never mentions any such law, no more than Josephus; and when Josephus thought that Jephtha had made such a vow, and executed it, he is so far from hinting at its being done in compliance with any law of God, that he expressly condemns him for it, as having acted contrary thereto; or, in his own words,+" as having offered an oblation neither conformable to the law, nor acceptable to God, nor weighing with himself what opinion the hearers would have of such a practice."

7. That Isaac being at this time, according te

• Apud Marsh, p. 76.

† Antiq. b. v. ch. vii, sect. 10.

Josephus, who is herein justly followed by Arch bishop Usher,+ no less than twenty-five years of age, and Abraham being, by consequence, one hundred and twenty-five, it is not to be supposed that Abraham could bind Isaac, in order to offer him in sacrifice, but by his own free consent; which free consent of the party who is to suffer, seems absolutely necessary in all such cases; and which free consent St. Clement, as well as Josephus, distinctly takes notice of on this occasion. St. Clement‡ describes it thus :-" Isaac being fully persuaded of what he knew was to come, cheerfully yielded himself up for a sacrifice." And for Josephus, after introducing Abraham in a pathetic speech, laying before Isaac the divine command, and exhorting him patiently and joyfully to submit to it, he tells us that "Isaac very cheerfully consented;" and then introduces him in a short, but very pious answer, acquiescing in the proposal; and adds, that "he then immediately, and readily, went to the altar to be sacrificed." Nor did Jephtha (Judges xi. 36, 37) perform his rash vow, whatever it were, till his daughter had given her consent to it.

8. It appears to me that Abraham never despaired entirely of the interposition of Providence for the preservation of Isaac, although in obedience to the command he prepared to sacrifice him to God. This seems to me intimated in Abraham's words to his servants on the third day, when he was in sight of the mountain on which he was to offer his son Isaac: "We will go and worship, and we will come again to you." As also in his answer to his son, when he inquired, "Behold, the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering ?-and Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering." (Gen. xxii. 5-7.) Both these passages look to me somewhat like such an expectation. However,

9. It appears most evident that Abraham, and I suppose Isaac also, firmly believed, that if God should permit Isaac to be actually slain as a sacrifice, he would certainly and speedily raise him again from the dead. This, to be sure, is supposed in the words already quoted, that both "he and his son would go and worship, and come again to the ser vants ;" and is clearly and justly collected from this history by the author to the Hebrews (chap. xi. 17, 18, 19): "By faith, Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten, of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called, accounting [or reasoning] that God was able to raise him from the dead." And this reasoning was at once very obvious and wholly undeniable, that since God was truth itself, and had over and over promised that he would "multiply Abraham exceedingly; that he should be a father of many nations; that his name should be no longer Abram but Abraham, because a father of many nations God had made him," &c.; that "Sarai his wife should be called Sarah; that he would bless her, and give Abraham a son also of her ;" and that "he would bless him; and she should become nations; and kings of people should be of her," &c. (Gen. xvii. 2, 4, 5, 6, 16); and that "in Isaac should his seed be called" (Gen. xxi. 12):--and since withal it is here supposed that Isaac was to be slain as a sacrifice before he was married, or had any seed, God was, for certain, obliged by his

promises, in these circumstances, to raise Isaac again from the dead; and this was an eminent instance of that faith whereby "Abraham believed God, and it was imputed to him for righteous ness" (Gen. xv. 6), viz. that if God should permit Isaac to be sacrificed, he would certainly and quickly raise him up again from the dead, "from whence also he received him in a figure," as the author to the Hebrews (chap. xi. 19) here justly observes.

10. That the firm and just foundation of Abraham's faith and assurance in God for such a resurrection was this, besides the general consideration of the divine veracity, that during the whole time of his sojourning in strange countries, in Canaan and Egypt, ever since he had been called out of Chaldea or Mesopotamia at seventy-five years of age (Gen. xii. 4), he had had constant experience of a special, of an over-ruling, of a kind and gracious Providence over him, till his 125th year, which, against all human views, had continually blessed him and enriched him, and, in his elder age, had given him first Ishmael by Hagar, and afterward promised him Isaac to "spring from his own body now dead, and from the deadness of Sarah's womb (Rom. iv. 19), when she was past age (Heb. xi. 11), and when it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women (Gen. xviii. 11), and had actually performed that and every other promise, how improbable soever that performance had appeared, he had ever made to him, and this during fifty entire years together; so that although, at his first exit out of Chaldea or Mesopotamia, he might have been tempted to stagger at such a promise of God, through unbelief, yet might he now, after fifty years' constant experience, be justly strong in faith, giving glory to God, as being fully persuaded that what God had promised, (the resurrection of Isaac) he was both able and willing to perform. (Rom. iv. 20, 21.)

11. That this assurance therefore, that God, if he permitted Isaac to be slain, would infallibly raise him again from the dead, entirely alters the state of the case of Abraham's sacrificing Isaac to the true God, from that of all other human sacrifices whatsoever offered to false ones, all those others being done without the least promise or prospect of such a resurrection; and this indeed takes away all pretence of injustice in the divine command, as well as of all inhumanity or cruelty in Abraham's obedience to it.

12. That upon the whole, this command to Abraham, and what followed upon it, looks so very like an intention of God to typify or represent beforehand, in Isaac, a beloved or only begotten son, what was to happen long afterwards to the great Son and seed of Abraham, the Messiah, the beloved and the only begotten of the Father, whose day Abraham saw by faith beforehand, and rejoiced to see it (John viii. 56), viz. that he, by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, should be crucified and slain, as a sacrifice, and should be raised again the third day (Acts ii. 22—32), and this at Jerusalem also; and that in the meantime, God would accept of the sacrifices of rams and the like animals, at the same city Jerusalem, that one cannot easily avoid the application. This seems the reason why Abraham was obliged to go to the land of Moriah, or Jerusalem, and why it is noted that it was the third day (Gen. xxii. 2, 4) that he came to the place, which implies that the return back,