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as the invention of ct weak imagination . Having brought down his history to the time of Jacob , he directs the notice of his headers to the progressive improvement that had ( aken place in Society from the time of Abraham , who led a roving pastoral life , and makes , by way of conclusion , the following Sensible remarks : rc It is singular that this accurate delineation of primitive manners , and the
discrimination of individual character in each successive patriarch , with all the imperfections and vices , as well of the social state as of the particular disposition , although so conclusive an evidence to the honesty of the narrative , has caused the greatest perplexity to many pious minds , and as great triumph to the adversaries of revealed religion . The object of this work is strictly historical , nofr theological ; yet a few observations may be ventured on this point , considering its important bearing on the manner in which Jewish liistory ought to be written and read . Some will not read the most ancient and
curious history m the v / orld , because it is in the Bible ; others read it in the Bible with a kind of pious awe , which prevents them from comprehending its real spirit . The latter look on the distinguished characters in the Mosaic annals as a kind of sacred beings , scarcely allied to human nature . Their intercourse with the Divinity invests them with a mysterious sanctity , which is expected to extend to all their actions . Hence , when they find the same passions at work , the ordinary feelings and vices of human nature prevalent both among the ancestors of the chosen people , and the chosen people themselves , they are confounded and distressed .
" Writers unfriendl y to revealed religion , starting with the same notion , that the Mosaic narrative is uniformly exemplary , not historical , have enlarged with malicious triumph on the delinquencies of the patriarchs and their descendants . Perplexity and triumph surel y equally groundless ! Had the avowed design of the intercourse of God with the patriarchs been their own unimpeachable perfection ; had that of the Jewish polity been the establishment of a divine Utopia , advanced to premature civilization , and overleaping at once those centuries of slow improvement through which the rest of
mankind were to pass , then it might have been difficult to give a reasonable account of the manifest failure . So far from this being the case , an ulterior purpose is evident throughout . The patriarchs and their descendants are the depositaries of certain great religious truths , the unity , omnipotence , and providence of God , not solely for their own use and advantage , but as conservators for the future universal benefit of mankind . Hence , provided the great end , the preservation of those truths , was eventually obtained , human affairs took their ordinary course , the common passions and motives of mankind were left in undisturbed operation . Superior in one respect alone , the
ancestors of the Je \ vs , and the Jews themselves , were not beyond their age or country in acquirements , in knowledge , or even in morals ; as far as morals are modified by usage and opinion . They were polygamists , like the rest of the eastern world ; they acquired the virtues and the vices of each state of society through which they passed . Higher and purer notions of the Deity , though they tend to promote and improve , b y no means necessarily enforce moral perfection ; their influence will be regulated by the social state of the are in which they are promulgated , and the bias of the individual character to wnich they are addressed . Neither the actual interposition of the Almighty
in favour of an individual or nation , nor his employment of them as instruments for certain important purposes , stamps the seal of divine approbation on all their actions ; in some cases , as in the deception practised by Jacob on his father , the worst part of their character manifestly contributes to the pur-Eose of God , still the nature of the action is not altered ; it is to be judged y its motive , not by its undesigned consequence . Allowance , therefore , being always made for their age and social state , the patriarchs , kings , and other Hebrew worthies , are amenable to the same verdict which would be passed on the eminent men of Greece or Rome . Excepting where they act
Untitled Article
3 78 The History of the Jens .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1830, page 378, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2585/page/18/
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