Reader sees, I am in order, when, to evince a designed omission, I explain the Law of punishing the crimes of Fathers on the Children, from the different natures of the two Dispensations; as going upon principles acceded to, though it be only disputandi gratia, by the Deists themselves.

P. 166. [EE] It hath been objected, "That the Prophet here upbraids the Jews as blameable in the use of this proverb." Without doubt. And their fault evidently consisted in this, That they would insinuate that an innocent posterity were punished for the crimes of their forefathers; whereas we have shewn, that when the children's teeth were set on edge, they likewise had been tasting.

P. 167. [FF] Dr, Stebbing has thought fit to support this charge of contradiction urged by Spinoza and Tindal, very effectually. He insults the author of the D. L. for pretending to clear up a difficulty, where there was none. "He [the author of the "D. L.] has also justified the equity of another Law, "that of punishing posterity for the crimes of their forefathers.-Though it is one of the plainest 46 cases in the world, that God doth this EVERY DAY

in the ordinary exercise of his Providence." Hist, of Abr. p. 89.-MOSES says, God will visit the iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children. JEREMIAH and EZEKIEL say as expressly, that God will not do

See, exclaim Spinoza and Tindal, the discor dancies and contradictions amongst these Prophets. Softly, replies the Author of the Divine Legation, You mistake the matter; the contradiction is all a fiction of your own brains: Moses speaks of the Jewish Dispensation; and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, of the Christian. I deny that, cries Dr. Stebbing: punishing posterity for the crimes of their Fathers is done every day under the Christian Dispensation, And thus the objection of Spinoza and Tindal, by

the

the kind pains of Dr. Stebbing, remains not only unanswered, but unanswerable. And yet this is the man, whose zeal would not let him rest till he had rescued Revelation from the dishonours brought upon it by the Author of the Divine Legation.

P. 169. [GG] Yet Dr. Sykes modestly tells his reader, that "there is not any ground or foundation "for this distinction; for that the innocent posterity "were sometimes deprived of life for the crimes of "their Parents in virtue of this Law."-But here, as the Doctor has not to do with me, but with the Prophet, I leave it to be adjusted between them, as the Public shall think fit to arbitrate.-Another has even ventured to ask, "How the Posterity, if it suffer for "its own guilt, can be said to suffer for the transgressions of its Parents?" As this doubt arises from the Prophet's words, Your iniquity and the iniquities of your fathers together, &c. I think myself not concerned to satisfy it, till these Writers have more openly rejected the authority of the Prophets.

P. 170. [HH] It is observable that by our own Constitution, no forfeitures attend capital condemnations in the Lord High Admiral's and Constable's Courts. And why? the reason is plain; those Judicatures proceed on the Roman, and not on the municipal laws of a feudal Government. Not but that the necessities of state frequently obliged other Governments, which never had been feudal, to have recourse to an extemporaneous confiscation. Even Rome itself sometimes exercised the severity of this punishment, even before it fell under the feet of its Tyrants. Cicero, to excuse the confiscations decreed against Lepidus, which affected his children, the nephews of Brutus, says to this latter: Nec vero me fugit quàm sit acerbum, parentium scelera filiorum poenis lui. Sed hoc PRÆCLARE LEGIBUS COMPARATUM est, ut caritas liberorum amiciores parentes VOL. V. reipublica

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reipublicæ redderet. Ep. ad Brutum liber, Ep. 12. And again: In qua videtur illud esse crudele, quod ad liberos, qui nihil meruerunt, pœna pervenit. SED

ID ET ANTIQUUM EST, ET OMNIUM CIVITATUM.

Ep. 15. Again, the same necessities of State have obliged Governments which had been originally feudal, but were so no longer, to retain this Law of forfeiture, essential to feudal Government even after all the feudal tenures had been abolished.-But he, who would see the LAW OF FORFEITURES defended on the more general principles of natural justice and civil policy, may have full satisfaction, in the very elegant and masterly Discourse so intitled.

66

66.

P. 171. [II] Here Dr. Sykes, who so charitably takes the Deists' part, all the way, against the Author of the D. L. says, "It would have been well To HAVE TOLD US what this doctrine was which wasbrought to light, and which held up these daring transgressors, and which continued them after death "the objects of divine justice." Defence, p. 83. Can the Reader, when he casts his eye upon the text, and sees that I had told him, in so many words and letters, that it was a FUTURE STATE, think the grave Doctor in his senses? But this quotation from him will have its use. It will serve for a specimen and example of the miserable dispositions with which an Answerer by profession addresses himself to confute Writers who have taken some pains to consider their subject, and to express their meaning.

He goes on objecting to this unknown doctrine. Ide asks how this doctrine did these things?" That is, how the doctrine of a future state could extend beyond the present life? This shews at least, he was in earnest in his ignorance, and perfectly well assured that I had not told him what the doctrine, was.

He proceeds with his interrogations, and asks, Why the punishing Children for their Fathers' faults, had no further use after the bringing in a future state?

It is

I had told him long ago, it was because the punishment was employed only to supply the want of a future state. But to this, he replies, nothing hindered its being added to the doctrine of a future state. very true nor did any thing hinder temporal rewards from being added to the doctrine of a future state under the Gospel; yet when a future state was brought to light, by that Dispensation, both one and the other were abolished. But is it not a little strange that the Doctor, in thus insisting on its further use, on account of its being able to restrain more daring Spirits, by laying hold of their instincts, at all times, as well under an unequal as, under an equal providence, should not see he was arguing against the DIVINE WISDOM, who by the mouth of the Prophet declared it of no further use under the Gospel dispensation?

3

P. 172. [KK] Ezechielis sententias adeo sententiis Mosis repugnantes invenerunt Rabini, qui nobis illos (qui jam tantum extant) libros Prophetarum reliquerunt, ut fere deliberaverint, ejus librum inter canonicos non admittere, atque eundem plane abscondissent, nisi quidam Chananias in se suscepisset ipsum explicare, quod tandem magno cum labore & studio (ut ibi narratur) aiunt ipsum fecisse, qua ratione autem non satis constat. Spinoza Tract. Theologico-Pol. pp. 27, 28. In the mean time it may be worth observing, that the explanation which I have here offered, cuts off the only means the modern Jews have of accounting for their long Captivity upon the Principle of the LAW's being still in force. Limborch urges Orobio with the difficulty of accounting for their present dispersion any other way than for the national crime of rejecting Jesus as the Messiah; seeing they are so far from falling into Pagan idolatries, the crime which brought on their other Captivities, that they are remarkably tenacious of the Mosaic Rites. To which Orobio replies, "that they are not their own sins for which they now suffer, but the sins of their forefathers."

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Now

Now Ezekiel has declared (and I have reconciled that declaration to the Law and the Prophets) that this mode of punishment hath been long abolished.

P. 174. [LL] Having thus reconciled the two Prophets, Moses and Ezekiel, on this point, one may be allowed to wonder a little at the want of good faith even in M. Voltaire, when it comes to a certain extreme.

This celebrated Poet has, like an honest man, written in defence of RELIGIOUS TOLERATION and to inforce his argument, has endeavoured (not indeed like a wise one, who should weigh his subject before he undertakes it) to prove, that all Religions in the world, but the Christian, have tolerated diversities of opinion. This common weakness of rounding one's System, for the support of a plain Right which requires no such finishing, hath led him into two of the strangest paradoxes that ever disgraced common sense.

The one, that the Pagan Emperors did not persecute the Christian Faith: The other, that the Jewish Magistrate did not punish for Idolatry.

In support of the first, his bad faith is most conspicuous; in support of the latter, his bad logic.

If there be one truth in Antiquity better established than another, it is this, That the Pagan Emperors did persecute the Christians, for their faith only; established, I say, both by the complaints of the Persecuted, and the acknowledgement of their Persecutors. But this being proved at large in the preface to this very Volume*, it is enough to refer the Reader thither.

The other Paradox is much more pleasantly supported. He proves that the Mosaic Law did not. denounce punishment on religious errors (though in direct words, it does so), nor did the Jewish Magistrate execute it (though we have several instances of the infliction recorded in their history). And what is the convincing argument he employs? It is this, The

* See Preface to Books IV. V. VI. edit. 1758. Vol. IV. of this Edition.-Ed.

P.35.

frequent