is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty, without obviating it: it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in the gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero.

X. Mistakes in judging of the scripture stile.

A GREAT mistake we run into is, when we suppose that the critical rules of eloquence are any ways necessary in divine compositions. The design of God, in recording his laws, was to inform our understandings, to cure our passions, and rectify our wills: and if this end be but attained, it is no great matter in what form of diction the prescription be given. We never expect that a physician's receipt should be wrote in a Ciceronian stile and if a lawyer has made us a firm conveyance of an estate, we never inquire what elegancies there are in the writing. When, therefore, God intends to do us far greater things than these; when he is delivering the terms of our salvation, and prescribing the rules of our duty: why should we expect that he should insist on the niceties of stile and expression, and not rather account it a diminution of his authority, to be elaborate in trifles, when he has the momentous issues of another life to command our attention, and affect our passions? In some of the greatest works of nature, God has not confined himself to any such order and exactness. The stars, we see, are not cast into regular figures: lakes and rivers are not bounded by straight lines: nor are hills and mountains exact cones or pyramids. When a mighty prince declares his will by laws and edicts to his subjects, is he, do we think, careful at all about a pure stile, or elegant composition? Is not the phrase thought proper enough, if it conveys as much as was intended? And would not the fine strains of some modern critics be thought pedantic and affected on such occasions ?—

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Why then should we expect in the oracles of God an exactness that would be unbecoming, and beneath the dignity of an earthly monarch, and which bears no proportion or resemblance to the magnificent works of the creation? A strict observation of the rules of grammar and rhetoric, in elegant expressions, harmonious periods, and technical definitions and partitions, may gratify indeed some readers; but then it must be granted that these things have the air of human contrivance in them; whereas in the simple, unaffected, artless, unequal, bold, figurative stile of the holy scriptures, there is a character singularly great and majestic, and what looks more like divine inspiration, than any other form of composition.

These observations being premised, if we should now consider the nature of eloquence in general, as it is defined by Aristotle to be a faculty of persuasion, which Cicero makes to consist in three things, instructing, delighting, and moving our readers or hearers mind, we shall find that the holy scriptures have a fair claim to these several properties.

For where can we meet with such a plain representation of things, in point of history, and such cogent arguments, in point of precept, as this one volume furnishes us with ? Where is there a history written more simply and natu. rally, and at the same time more nobly and loftily, than that of the creation of the world? Where are the great lessons of morality taught with such force and perspicuity (except in the sermons of Christ, and the writings of the apostles) as in the book of Deuteronomy? Where is the whole compass of devotion, in the several forms of confession, petition, supplication, thanksgiving, vows, and praises, so punctually taught us, as in the book of psalms? Where are the rules of wisdom and prudence so convincingly laid down as in the proverbs of Solomon, and the choice sentences of Ecclesiastes? Where is vice and impiety of all kinds more justly displayed, and more fally confuted, than in the threats and admonitions of the prophets? And what do the little warmths, which may be raised in the fancy by an artificial composure and vehemence of stile, signify in comparison of those strong impulses and movements which the holy scriptures make upon good men's souls, when they represent the frightful justice of an angry God to stubborn offenders, and the

bowels of his compassion, and unspeakable kindness, to all true penitents and faithful servants?

The holy scripture indeed has none of these flashy ornaments of speech, wherewith human compositions so plentifully abound; but then it has a sufficient stock of real and peculiar beauties to recommend it. To give one instance for all out of the history of Joseph and his family: the whole relation indeed is extremely natural: but the manner of his discovering himself to his brethren is inimitable. "And Joseph could no longer refrain himself-but, lifting up his voice with tears, said—I am Joseph-doth my father yet live?-And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. And Joseph said to his brethren, come near me, I pray you: and they came near, and he said, I am Joseph-your brother-whom ye sold into Egypt."Nothing certainly can be a more lively description of Joseph's tender respect for his father, and love for his brethren: aud, in like manner, when his brethren returned, and told their father in what splendor and glory his son Joseph lived, it is said, "That Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not; but when he saw the waggons which Joseph had sent for him, the spirit of Jacob, their father, revived; and Israel said, it is enough -Joseph my son is yet alive-I will go-and see him-before I die." Here is such a contrast of different pas sions, of utter despondency, dawning hope, and confirmed faith, triumphant joy, and paternal affection, ast no orator in the world could express more movingly, in a more easy manner, or shorter compass of words.

Nay more, had I leisure to gratify the curious, I might easily shew, that those very figures and schemes of speech, which are so much admired in profane authors, as their great beauties and ornaments, are no where more conspicuous than in the sacred.

One figure, for instance, esteemed very florid among the masters of art, is, when all the members of a period begin with the same word. The figure is called anaphora; and yet (if I mistake not) the 15th psalm affords us a very beautiful passage of this kind. "Lord who shall

abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly; he that back-biteth not with his tongue; he that maketh much of them that

fear the Lord; he that sweareth to his hurt, and changeth not; he that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that does these things shall never be moved."

The ancient orators took a great deal of pride in ranging finely their antitheta. Cicero is full of this, and uses it many times to a degree of affectation: and yet I cannot find any place wherein he has surpassed that passage of the prophet. "He that killeth an ox, is as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, as if he offered swine's blood." But above all ether figures, that whereon poets and orators love chiefly to dwell, is the hypotyposis, or lively description; and yet we shall hardly find in the best classic authors, any thing comparable, in this regard, to the Egyptians' destruction in the Red sea, related in the song of Moses and Miriam; to the description of the leviathan in Job; to the descent of God, and a storm at sea in the psalmist; to the intrigues of an adulterous woman in the proverbs; to the pride of the Jewish ladies in Isaiah; and to the plague of locusts in Joel; which is represented like the ravaging of a country; and storming a city by an army; 66 A fire devoureth before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness, and nothing shall escape them. Before their face people shall be pained; all faces shall gather blackness. They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; they shall march every one in his way, and they shall not break their ranks. They shall run to and fro in the city, they shall run upon the wall; they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter into the windows as a thief." The description is more remark. able, because the analogy is carried quite throughout without straining, and the whole processes of a conquering army in the manner of their march, their destroying the provision, and burning the country, in their scaling the walls, breaking into houses, and running about the vanquished city, are fully delineated and set before our eyes.

From these few examples (for it would be endless to proceed in instances of this kind) it appears, that the holy bible is far from being defective in point of eloquence; and (what is a peculiar commendation of it) its

stile is full of a grateful variety; sometimes majestic as becomes that high and holy one who inhabiteth eternity:" sometimes so low as to answer the other part of his character, who dwelleth with him that is of an humble spirit;" and, at all times so proper, and adapted so well to the several subjects it treats of, that whoever considers it attentively, will perceive, in the narrative parts of it, a strain so simple and unaffected; in the prophetic and devotional, something so animated and su blime; and in the doctrinal and preceptive, such an air of dignity and authority, as seems to speak its original divine.

We allow indeed, that method is an excellent art, highly conducive to the clearness and perspicuity of discourse; but then we affirm, that it is an art of modern invention in comparison to the times when the sacred penmen wrote, and incompatible with the manner of writing which was then in vogue. We indeed in Europe, who, in this matter, have taken our examples from Greece, can hardly read any thing with pleasure that is not digested into order, and sorted under proper heads; but the eastern nations, who were used to a free way of discourse, and never cramped their notions by methodi cal limitations, would have despised a composition of this kind, as much as we do a schoolboys theme, with all the formalities, of its exordiums, ratios, and confirmation. And if this was no precedent for other nations, much less can we think, that God Almighty's methods ought, to be confined to human laws, which, being designed for the narrowness of our conceptions, might be improper and injurious to his, whose "thoughts are as far above ours, as the heavens are higher than the earth.”

The truth is, inspiration is, in some measure, the language of another world, and carries in it the reasoning of spirits, which, without controversy, is vastly different from ours. We indeed, to make things lie plain before our understandings are forced to sort them out into distinct partitions, and consider them by little and little, that so at last, by gradual advances, we may come to a tolerable conception of them; but this is no argument for us to think that pure spirits do reason after this manner. Their understandings are quick and intuitive; they see the whole compass of rational inferences at once; and