elegant a manner, to arife out of natural Religion, is not at all diminished by that airy fpeculation.

But as the great Pillar of Natural Law is Moral obligation; and of Natural Religion, the Being and Attributes of God, there are two capital Books I would here recommend to our Student, to compleat his ideas of this Law and Religion; which are, Cumber land on the Law of Nature, and Cudworth's Intellectual Syftem. Thefe, on fome other accounts, might be commodioufly placed elsewhere; yet on the whole they may, perhaps, be read with most profit, after the two books of Grotius and Wollafion.

Thofe incomparable works of Cumberland and Cudworth were, it is true, written in confutation of Hobbes's Philofophy; which then threatened, like a later and ruder attempt, to overthrow all the received Morality and Metaphyfics of the ancient and modern world. But their method of polemic writing (for fuch, indeed, it was) deferves commendation, as beft answering their general end; while they overlooked the perfonal fingularities of their adverfary,

and

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and turned themselves to the abstract ques tions.-In Cumberland, Hobbes met with a very fuperior Reafoner; and in Cudworth, a far more accomplished Scholar. Both of them, indeed, inferior to that Peft of Science, facred and prophane, in elegance of compofition and in purity and splendour of language. On which account, I fhould advife, that Cumberland be read, not in his own ungracious Latin, but in Barbeyrac's excellent tranflation into French.-For the fame, and for a further reason, I should prefer Mofheim's Latin tranflation of the Intellectual Syftem, to the English original; that is to fay, not only for its purity and elegance, but for its great abundance and excellence of learned notes. Ì

Cumberland excells all men in fixing the true grounds of moral obligation; out of which, Natural Law and Natural Religion both arise.

Cudworth takes a larger and fublimer range he begins with Metaphyfics, which employs what we now have of the famous work of the Intellectual Syftem.

In

In exhaufting the Metaphyfic questions concerning the Being and Nature of the Deity, he hath occafionally given us a compleat History of Ancient Learning as far as relates to those Inquiries: which, besides the particular use in the order of the course, will be of this further advantage to our ftudent, the throwing great lights on what he finds delivered concerning one God and one Lord in the Old and New Testament, when he now comes, after these preparations, to the direct ftudy of the Sacred Writings; the proper end of his labours, the gaining a true Knowledge of Revealed Religion.

SECT. III.

NOW, though the Mofaic Religion, to which we come, be no where to be learnt, but in the Old Teftament; nor the Christian, but in the New; yet it may be convenient for us to know, what ideas thofe learned men, who are believed to have moft fuccessfully ftudied the Sacred Books, have entertained of both not with a purpose to acquiefce

acquiefce in their labours, but to facilitate our own; not for our guides, whom we åre implicitly to follow in a road as yet to ourselves unknown; but for our Counsellors or Affiftants, who are ready to lay before us what they conceive of the Carte du pays in general; which our student may use or correct for his own advantage, as he goes along.

There are not many who have applied themselves, in good earnest, to affift us in our knowledge of the Mofaic Law; and most of these very unfuccefsfully. From the Jewish Doctors we derive much lefs inftruction than might have been expected. Yet, to one of these, it must be confeffed, we owe what we have of what is most confiderable on this fubject; I mean a Rationale of the Jewish Ritual; which effential part of the Mofaic Law had been long the ftumbling-block of Infidelity; and was likely to continue fo; when, in the firft flourishing times of the Saracene Empire, a great number of Jews (as we learn from William of Paris, in his book de Legibus) devoting themselves to the ftudy of the Ariftotelian Ff Phi

Philofophy (then cultivated by these followers of Mahomet with a kind of Scientific rage), and thereby contracting an inquifitive and difputatious habit, fet themfelves on examining into the Reasons of the Jewish Laws; which being unable to dif cover, they, with their usual levity, concluded, that they were futile, absurd, and of human original; and so apostatised, in great numbers, from the religion of their Fathers, to Mahometanism.

To put a stop to this evil, the famous Maimonides wrote, with much fuccefs, the book called Ductor Dubitantium; the chief purpose of which is to explain the causes of the Jewish Ritual.

On this ground, our excellent Countryman, Spencer, long afterwards, when the Rabbi's book had been almost forgotten, erected his admirable book intituled, De Legibus Hebræorum Ritualibus. This, tho' confined to an illuftration of the Ritual Law, is, by far, the most confiderable attempt yet made to explain the nature and genius of the Mofaic Religion: while the other capital parts of this Difpenfation,