concerning the personal innocence of Job, it was no wonder that they still sung their old song, and went on as they had begun, to condemn their old afflicted friends since it was in the power of God alone to explore the hearts of men, and to know for certain whether it was Job's piety that rightly applied a consolation, or whether it was his vanity that arrogated a false confidence to himself. This is a very pleasant way of coming to the sense of a disputed passage: not, as of old, by shewing it supports the Writer's argument, but by shewing it supports nothing but the Critic's hypothesis. I had taken it for granted that Job reasoned to the purpose, and therefore urged this argument against understanding him as speaking of the Resurrection in the xixth chapter: “The disputants (say I, Div. Leg. Book vi. § 2.) are all "equally embarrassed in adjusting the ways of Provi"dence. Job affirms that the good man is sometimes "unhappy: the three friends pretend that he never can; "because such a situation would reflect upon God's justice. Now the doctrine of a resurrection supposed

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to be urged by Job, cleared up all this embarras. If "therefore his friends thought it true, it ended the dispute; if false, it lay upon them to confute it. Yet

they do neither: they neither call it into question, nor "allow it to be decisive. But without the least notice "that any such thing had been urged, they go on as they begun, to inforce their former arguments, and to con"fute that which they seem to understand was the only one Job had urged against them, viz. the consciousness of his own innocence." Now what says our learned Author to this? Why, he says, that if I be mistaken, and he right, in his account of the book of Job, the reason is plain why the three friends took no notice of Job's appeal to a resurrection; namely, because it deserved none. As to his being in the right, the reader, I suppose, will not be greatly solicitous, if it be one of the consequences that the sacred Reasoner is in the wrong. However, before we allow him to be right, it will be expected he should answer the following questions. If, as he says, the point in the book of Job was only his personal innocence, and this, not (as I say) upon the principle of yo innocent person punished, I would ask, how it was possible

possible that Job's friends and intimates should be so obstinately bent on pronouncing him guilty, the purity of whose former life and conversation they were so well acquainted with? If he will say, the disputants went upon that principle; I then ask, how came Job's appeal to a resurrection not to silence his opposers? as it accounted for the justice of God in the present unequal distribution of things.

The learned Writer proceeds-This difficulty therefore being removed, namely, why his friends were not immediately put to silence when Job had so solemnly and magnificently talked of a future judgment, nothing hinders us from applying that celebrated text chap. xix. not to a temporal restitution to his former condition, but to a resurrection to eternal life. How well he has removed the difficulty, the reader now sees. But he is too hasty, when he adds, that now nothing hinders us from applying the celebrated text chap. xix. to a resurrection to eternal life. I have shewn, in my Discourse on Job, that many things hinder us from understanding it in this sense, besides the silence of the three friends; such as the silence of Elihu the moderator, nay even of God himself the determiner of the dispute. Which difficulties become still more perplexing, if indeed the sole scope of the book be, as our Author supposes, to give a perpetual document of humility and patience to all good men in affliction: for then the doctrine needed the sanction of the most deliberate and authoritative speakers. Add to this, that the learned Writer's account of the author creates new difficulties. For, can we suppose, Moses would so clearly mention a future judgment here, and entirely omit it in the Pentateuch? Or is it a matter of so slight moment that a single mention of it would suffice? Indeed, were Esdra (as I suppose) the author, much more might be said in behalf of this interpretation; as we have shewn that the later Prophets opened, by degrees, the great principles of the Gospel Dispensation : of which I would fain think the doctrine of the resur-‹ rection of the body to be one.

He concludes But if, to the arguments brought by our Commentator, you add also those, which a writer

Div. Leg. Book vi§ 2.

above all praise, the present Bishop of Sarum, hath most beautifully interwoven in his Dissertation on The Opinion of the Ancients concerning the Circumstances and Consequences of the Lapse of Mankind, I believe you will want nothing to confirm you in the opinion of the antiquity of the book, and my sense of this most perplexed passage. To seek refuge in that excellent Prelate, whose notions of the nature and design of the book of Job overthrow all he has been saying, and confirm all he has been opposing, looks very much like distress. However, if he will subunit to the Bishop's authority for the scope of the book in general, I shall be very willing to allow his interpretation of the nineteenth chapter. Our Author indeed does that great man's character but justice. Yet how Dr. Schultens and Dr. Sherlock came to hit the same palate, to me, I confess, is as hard to reconcile, as how Barius and Virgil should meet for a model to the same writer.

But the name of that great man is auspicious to sacred truth. One can no sooner mention him, on any occasion of literature, than one sees him pointing out some truth or other, capable, if attended to, of clearing up whatever may be in question. His fine Discourse on the Book of Job abounds with instances of this kind. One of which falls here naturally in my way. And as it seems the least supported of his interpretations, and, at the same time, greatly confirms what I have advanced concerning the age of the book, I shall endeavour to set it in a just light. The truth I uncan is in his interpretation of these words of Job, By his Spirit the heavens are garnished; his hand formed the CROOKED SERPENT*. By which, he supposes, is meant the DEVIL, the apostate dragon, Spáжwv ásáτns, as the Septuagint, by thus translating it, seems to have understood the place. For he reasonably asks, How came the forming of a crooked serpent to be mentioned as an instance of Almighty power, and to be set, as it were, upon an equal foot with the creation of the heavens and all the host of them.—Can it possibly be imagined (says he) that the forming the crocked serpent meant no more than that God created snakes and adders |

The Use and Intent of Prophecy, &c. 3d Edit. pr. 213, 214.

Certainly,

Certainly, this could never be the meaning. But then it will be objected by those who are as loth to find a devil for their tempter, as a God for their Redeemer (imagining they are well capable of performing both parts them. selves), that, by the crooked, serpent, is meant a great constellation near the Arctic Pole, so called; or, at least, that enormous trail of light to which the Pagans have given the name of the Via Lactea: either of which will beautify the sense, and ennoble the expression of the context; the circumstance, of garnishing the heavens, being immediately precedent. It must be owned that this interpretation has an extreme air of probability. But it is nevertheless a false one; as I shall now endeaYour to shew.

It is certain then that the ancient Hebrews (if we may believe the Rabbins, who seem, in this case, to be unexceptionable evidence) did not, in their astronomy, represent the stars, either single, or in constellations, by the name, or figure, of any animal whatsoever; or distinguish them any otherwise than by the letters of their alphabet artificially applied. And this, they tell us, was their constant practice, till in the latter ages; when they got acquainted with the science of the Greeks: then indeed, they learnt the art of new tricking up their sphere, and making it as fashionable as their neighbours. But they did it still with modesty and reserve; and scrupled, even then, to admit of any human figure. The reason given for this prudery (which was the danger of idolatry) is the highest confirmation of the truth of their account. For it is not to be believed, that when the astronomy and superstition of Egypt were so closely colleagued, and that by this very means, the names given to the constellations, that Moses, who, under the ministry of God, forbad the Israelites to make any likeness of any thing in heaven above, would suffer them to make new likenesses there; which if not, in the first intention, set up to be worshipped, yet we know never waited long without obtaining that honour. From all this it appears, that neither Moses nor Esdra could call a constellation by the name of the crooked serpent. The consequence is, that his Lordship's interpretation is to be received; there being nothing else of moment to be opposed to its truth.

But

But this sense, we say, gives strong support to what we have observed, in The Divine Legation, (book ix. ch. 1.) concerning the age of the author. It being there shewn, that, according to the method used by Providence for the gradual opening of the Gospel principles, we might look to find, in this very place (as we in fact do find) the first more express information concerning the real author of the Fall of Man, as recorded in the third chapter of Genesis.

But, to conclude with the learned Editor of the book of Job. He had, I presume, given the intelligent reader more satisfaction, if, instead of labouring to evade two or three independent though corroborating proofs of the truth of my hypothesis, he had well accounted how that hypothesis, which he affects to represent as a false one, should be able to lay open and unfold the whole Poem upon one entire, elegant, and noble plan, that does honour to the sacred Writer who composed it. And not only so, but to clear up, consistently with that plan, all those particular texts, whose want of light had made them hitherto an easy prey to critics and interpreters from every quarter. And this, in a Poem become through time and negligence so desperately perplexed, that commentators chose rather to find their own notions in it than to seek for those of the author. This, how negligently soever the learned Writer may think of it, the Public, I am persuaded, will consider as a very uncommon mark of truth; and deserving of another kind of confutation than what he hath bestowed upon it.

Section 5.

[See Divine Legation, Books i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi.]

HERE I should have ended, had I not been told there was something still more wanted than a defence of particular passages; which commonly indeed carry their own evidence along with them; and that was a general review of the argument of The Divine Legation, so far as it was yet advanced; explaining the relation which the several parts bear to each other, and to the whole: for that the deep professor who had digested his theology into sums and systems, and the gentle preacher who never ventured