PREFACE.

Ir will naturally be asked by those, who may chance to see this volume, why its author has caused a book to be printed, which he yet does not choose to publish. When, however, it is considered, that I have treated chiefly of things deemed sacred, and that there is considerable novelty in some of my opinions, I trust, that I shall be easily pardoned, if I confine the distribution of the copies of this work to a narrow circle.

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I pretend, that the ancient Jews, like other nations of antiquity, had their esoteric and theirexoteric doctrines. They concealed the former under innumerable types and symbols, the meaning of which is generally unknown among their descendants. It is the object of my book to explain the hidden sense of many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures; but as Christians are, for the most part, so well satisfied with the literal sense, as never to look for any other, except when it is thought that some allusion is made to the advent of Christ, I feel myself unwilling to publish any explanations of the original text, which may not coincide with those notions concerning its meaning which are most commonly received. Besides, there may be passages in this volume, which are capable of alarming the timid, and of provoking the prejudiced. Ignorance bears ill being told, that it has much to learn; and to instruct Pride is to affront it.

The Old Testament is a book, which we have all read in our childhood, when reason proposes no doubts, and when judgment is too feeble to decide for itself. But its early associations are generally the strongest in the human mind; and what we have been taught to credit as children, we are seldom disposed to question as men. Called away from speculative inquiries by the common business of life, men in general possess neither the inclination, nor the leisure, to examine what they believe, or why they believe. A powerful prejudice remains in the mind;-ensures conviction without the trouble of thinking;-and repels doubt without the aid or authority of reason. The multitude, then, is not very likely to applaud an author, who calls upon it to consider what it had hitherto neglected, and to stop where it had been accustomed to pass on. It may also happen, that there is a learned and a formidable body,

which, having given its general sanction to

the literal interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, may be offended at the

presumption of an unhallowed layman, who ventures to hold, that the language of those Scriptures is often symbolical and allegorical, even in passages, which both the Church and the Synagogue consider as containing nothing else than a plain statement of facts. A writer, who had sufficient boldness to encounter such obstacles, and to make an appeal to the public, would only expose himself to the invectives of offended bigotry, and to the misrepresentations of interested malice. The press would be made to ring with declamations against him; and neither learning, nor argument, nor reason, nor moderation, on his side, would protect him from the literary assassination which awaited him. In vain would he put on the heaventempered panoply of Truth. The weapons,

which could neither pierce his buckler, nor break his casque, might be made to pass with envenomed points through the joints of his armour. Every trivial error, which he might commit, would be magnified into a flagrant fault; and every insignificant mistake, into which he might fall, would be represented by the bigoted, or by the hireling critics of the day, as an ignorant, or as a perverse, deviation from the truth.

Under these circumstances, I feel little inclination to make my opinions too publicly known. It may be hoped, however, that reason and liberality will soon again be progressive in their march; and that men will cease to think that Religion can be really at war with Philosophy. When we hear the timid sons of Superstition calling to each other to rally round the