CHAPTER II.

In this Chapter is unfolded the Origin of that rooted Rancour and Contempt with which the Jews are inflamed against the MESSIAH. That infatuated People pay lefs Deference to the WRITTEN than to the ORAL LAW, which they affert to have been delivered to Mofes on Sinai. An biftorical Account of the celebrated Code of Jewish Traditions collected by Rabbi JUDAH THE HOLY, and called THE MISNA. Of the two TALMUDS of JERUSALEM and BABYLON, and of the two TARGUMS of ONKELOS and JONATHAN.-The former TARGUM the most concife and pure Paraphrafe, the latter more diffufe, and fuppofed to have been interpolated. - A progreffive View taken of the Pallages in the Old Teftament, establishing fome a PLURALITY, and others fo express upon the AGENCY and DIVINE ATTRIBUTES, of the MIMRA, or LOGOS, and the RUAH HAKKODESH, or HOLY SPIRIT, as plainly to evince that a TRINITY of Divine HYPOSTASES, Subfifting

fubfifting in the Godhead, must have been the Belief of the ancient Jews.

I that the learned of the Jewish nation, in IN

N the preceding chapter I have afferted

that

every period of their empire, knew and acknowledged the great truth which we are confidering; that they applied, to the Meffiah whom they expected, most of the texts and prophecies in the Old Testament, which we confider as pointedly allufive to Jesus Christ; but that, to elude the force of the application of those texts to Him and their completion of those prophecies in his Perfon, they have mutilated their most venerated records; that they have even declared that the true sense of their Scriptures is only to be found in the commentaries of their celebrated doctors, and that, in fact, they hold the Talmuds composed by them in higher veneration than the original. I have also hinted, that, if a doctrine fo important as this in the Chriftian fyftem, a fyftem which in a great measure is founded upon that of the Hebrews, cannot be difcovered in thofe Scriptures in as great a degree as a nation, for ever relapfing into polytheism, would bear the revelation of it; that its being a genuine doc trine of Christianity will be liable to be fufpected

pected by thofe who confider the one as infeparably connected with the other. A patient and candid examination of the whole question will enable us to folve every difficulty and annihilate every doubt.

It is neceffary to acquaint the reader, that from that remote and memorable period in which the divine Legiflator appeared to Mofes on Sinai, the Jews have regarded, in the moft facred light, a code of traditional laws, which they denominate oral, in order to distinguish them from those which are called written, laws. They believe, that, when Mofes received the law from the Almighty, he alfo received certain CABALA, or mysterious explanations of that law, which he did not think proper to commit to writing, but delivered orally to Aaron, to the priests the fons of Aaron, and the affembled Sanhedrim. While the former was faithfully delivered to pofterity in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, the latter, imprinted by frequent repetition on the memory of those to whom they were thus orally intrufted, were as faithfully delivered down by tradition, from father to fon, and from age to age, till about the year after Christ 180, when a celebrated rabbi, named Judah the Holy, collected together thefe vari

ous

ous traditions, and, committing them to writing, formed out of them the voluminous compilation, holden in fuch profound veneration among the Jews, called the MISNA, a Hebrew word fignifying repetition. This holy doctor was the chief of the miserable remnant of that nation, who remained after their final difperfion, and after the total destruction of Jerufalem and the temple. Judah was induced to this act by the juft apprehenfion, that, in their various difperfion and migrations through fo many provinces, and during the interruption of the public fchools, the traditions of their fathers and the rites of their religion should be obliterated from their memory. It was against the rigid adherence of the Jews to the inftitutions prescribed by these traditions, preferved with such anxious care and honoured with fuch profound veneration, to the great neglect of the precepts of the written law, that our Saviour repeatedly directed his animated cenfures: Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own traditions. He ridicules their blind fuperftition in that refpect; and, while he does not difcourage a decent attention to the wife maxims of their forefathers, he, in very decifive language, ftigmatifes the infatuated

zeal

zeal that wearied itself in a round of ceremo nious obfervances of human institution, yet neglected the weightier matters of the law of God. From this caufe principally arose the implacable malice with which the fcribes and, pharifees pursued even to the cross the dauntlefs upbraider of their hypocrify, who, to the crime of being humbly born, added the aggravating offence of manly truth and inflexible. integrity.

About a hundred years after Rabbi Judah had thus confolidated into one body all the traditions in his power to collect, under the title of MISNA, which the Jews to this day honour with the appellation of the Second Law, and which in fact they hold in higher veneration than the Firft, another celebrated rabbi, of the name of Johanan, compiled a treatife called the GEMARA. Gemara is a Hebrew term fignifying perficere, confummare; that is to say, this learned doctor, by collecting all the remaining traditions of the Jews, as well as all the legal decifions of the Jewish doctors on certain great points of controverfy relative either to their ecclefiaftical or civil policy, and by adding an ample comment of his own upon the Mifna, completed the grand undertaking which Judah had begun. "They

therefore