APPENDIX TO THE NINTH BOOK

OF THE

DIVINE LEGATION.

What I undertook in this volume was, to deliver my thoughts concerning the NATURE AND GENIUS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION. This I have now done; but as the immediate occasion of my design was to strengthen and support the idea I had given of the nature of the Mosaic religion (on which idea I erected my Moral Demonstration of the Divine Legation of Moses), this discourse concerning the Christian religion had not answered its purpose had I not, in the conclusion of it, turned my eye particularly towards the support of that moral demonstration; not as the completion of an unfinished argument (into which odd mistake many of my inattentive readers had unluckily fallen); but as the illustration only of an argument long since finished and complete in all its parts. This hath been shown and explained in the last section of the sixth Book, to which I again refer such of those readers whom the multiplicity of its parts, delivered by long intervals, may have led into the mistake; though an argument in itself so clear and strong as to be reduced to a single syllogism.

There are few believers, perhaps, who do not see, in the gross, that JUDAISM and CHRISTIANITY are intimately connected and related; yet the Mosaic religion having been, as the Apostle says, for wise purposes of Providence thrust in* between the natural law first given by God, and his last revealed will, committed to the ministry of Jesus, that connexion between Judaism and Christianity hath not been so precisely understood by many as might have been expected.

By the first revelation to mankind in Paradise, ETERNAL LIFE was promised, on the condition of obedience. It was lost by disobedience; and DEATH, in consequence thereof, was denounced on the human race. In this condition did mankind lie when Moses had his commission to deliver the second revealed Will of God to the posterity of Abraham, who still continued, with the rest of mankind, under the curse or punishment of death; so far lightened, indeed, by the law of nature (which operated throughout every part of the moral dispensation), by that law's teaching that God would reward for obedience and punish for disobedience. Hence we see that the sanction of the Law of Moses must needs be the same with the sanction of the law of nature.

The later Jews especially thought, indeed, that their Law had redeemed its followers from the

*Gal. ii. 19.

curse denounced on Adam and his posterity; and so considered it as a perfect Law in opposition to Christianity.

But the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells another story.* "The Law (says he) made nothing perfect: it was the bringing in of a BETTER HOPE which effected this." The Jew, then, was ready to ask, as Saint Paul tells us he did, "Wherefore then serveth the Law?" The Apostle answers, "It was added (or thrust in between the promise to Abraham and the performance by Jesus Christ) because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made;"† i. e. it was added in order to restrain vice and immorality. For though eternal life was the reward of faith in Jesus Christ, yet, as we have shown, none were entitled to that reward but those who had a right to some reward by the law of nature, some provision was first to be made for that previous qualification. So much order and harmony will be always found in the ordinances of God.

And this may be no improper place to reprove the folly of those objectors, who say that a Revelation which did not teach a future state could not come from God.

The reasons they give are these:

*Heb. vii. 19.

† Gal. ii. 19.

1. Because a future state is essential to all true religion.

2. Because a religion without a future state

infringes on the attributes of the Deity. 1. To the first objection (for I am now reasoning on the principles of believers) I answer, and say, that the first notice we have of a state teaching immortal life, is from revealed religion, given to man in Paradise; by which it was bestowed on the condition of obedience to God's declared will. Man disobeyed, and forfeited this gift, and so was brought back, and became a second time the subject of natural religion. The state of mortality or DEATH prevailed over all, under which he still continued even after God had communicated his revealed will to the posterity of Abraham by the ministry of Moses. If therefore Moses did indeed receive his religion from heaven, it could not contain but by accident the doctrine of a future state; for Adam's forfeiture was not yet remitted.

And this leads us to a solution of the second objection, that a religion without a future state infringes on the attributes of the Deity.

The truth or reason on which this assertion is founded stands on a mistaken supposition, that when man was confined to God's moral government here, Providence was unequally dispensed as at present. In this case, indeed, the cutting off a future state would render the second objection of some force. But this was not the case; for when man

lost immortal life by his disobedience, and became subject to death or mortality, the dispensation of God's Providence here was equal, and nothing was wanted to be set right hereafter. If the loss of immortality, and subjection to death and mortality, will not give God's government credit for this truth, the history of Moses expressly informs us of the contrary, and assures us, that in the early ages of the world, God's Providence in his government of man was equal. This appears from the history of the Patriarchs; the great deluge; the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah; the history of Abraham and his posterity till their settlement in Egypt, when they soon forgot their God, and on that account were reduced to the unequal administration of Providence, as the Gentiles were about the same period, and for the same cause. But when Moses was sent to lead the Israelites into Canaan, and to instruct them in the knowledge of the true God, the equal Providence was restored to them, not as a mere peculiarity of the Jewish republic (in which light, indeed, our argument on the Divine Legation confined us to consider it), but as the general dispensation of Providence to man, while he preserved the memory of the true God. The confined view of it in that argument led the opposers of the Divine Legation of Moses, who considered an equal Providence as only proper to the Jewish republic, to acknowledge that an equal Providence (because so incessantly