have applied to Pharaoh till he had prepared them for refiftance, and had taken his measures to defeat the attempts of the Egyptians to prevent their efcape; whereas he appears to have ufed no precautions of this kind. No arms, or ftores, were provided, no alliance made with other nations, and, in fhort, nothing was done which any fenfible man muft have feen to be neceffary for the fuccefs of fo great an enterprise.

The emancipation of the Ifraelites, therefore, in this state of things, does not appear to have been effected by the policy of man, and confequently it is the more probable, that, fince it was effected, it was by the immediate hand of God, in the manner re-: lated by Mofes.

Mofes was neither a warrior, nor an orator, fo that he was deftitute of every natural requisite for fuch an undertaking as the emancipation of his countrymen from the power of the Egyptians. The impediment he had in his fpeech laid him under the neceffity of employing his brother Aaron even to fpeak for him; and when, in the courfe of the history, a battle

was

was to be fought, Jofhua commanded, while he only prayed at a diftance. Such was his diffidence of himself, that he was several times upon the point of abandoning his charge altogether, unable to contend with the many difficulties with which he was furrounded. When he was much embarraffed with bufinefs, he was relieved, not by any fagacity of his own, but by the fenfible advice of his father-in-law Jethro.

Whatever Mofes might have been taught of the learning of the Egyptians, it either amounted to very little, or, if it had any relation to the powers powers of nature, he retained but little of it, as he feems to have been, impofed upon by the tricks of the magicians, who imitated his miracles. For with the greatest fimplicity he fays, that those magicians did the very fame that he did, in changing their rods into ferpents, Exod. vii. 11, water into blood, v. 22, and in bringing frogs upon the land, ch. viii. 7. From this he would probably infer, that thefe magicians were affifted by fome fuperior beings, but that the power of his God was greater than that of theirs. Of

this he could have no doubt, from the ferpent into which Aaron's rod was changed fwallowing up thofe which had been fubftituted in the place of their rods, and efpecially from their not being able to remove the plagues with which his God had afflicted them.

As this perfuafion was fufficient for his purpose, and would encourage him to perfift in what he had undertaken, he was permitted, as far as appears, to remain ignorant of their arts. The frequent intervention of fuperior beings, and the power of certain forms of words and ceremonies, to bring down, and to direct, the agency of those beings, was the belief of all mankind in the early ages of the world; and it was nothing but Christianity, which led to the better philofophy of modern times, that has undeceived mankind in this refpect. This belief has even still greater power over the vulgar in all Chriftian countries, charms, as they are called, being in daily ufe for the cure of diforders, and many other purposes. Mofes had no doubt of the reality of his own miracles, being confcious that he had recourfe

F

courfe to no artifice whatever; and belieying that the Egyptian priefts had fupernatural affiftance of a fimilar nature, though inferior to that which accompanied him, he relates what appeared to him to be the fact, on both fides, with equal fimplicity.

That the miracles of Mofes could not have been any trick, is evident, from the magnitude of them, and from other circumftances attending them. In the first inftance, it was not a fmall quantity of water, fuch as might have been contained in a bason, that appeared to have been converted into blood, or to become red like blood, which was probably all that the Egyptian magicians effected, and which many perfons at this day could perform as well as they, but it was all the water of the river, fo that the people could not make any use of it, but were obliged to dig wells. As the like has never happened to this river before, or to any other river fince that time, it is evident that there must have been a miracle in the cafe. This change must alfo have affected the river through the whole of its extent, and have continued

a con

à confiderable time, otherwise fresh water would foon have diluted the vitiated, and in a short time the river would have purged itself. Suppofing this change in the river to have been introduced by fome natural, but at prefent unknown, caufe, yet as it had operated only at the time that Mofes foretold that it would, there must have been fomething miraculous in his foreknowledge of that event; for he could not himself have been able to effect what he declared would certainly come to pass.

This extraordinary miracle continued feven days, and by what means this change in the river ceafed we are not told; but presently after came the plague of frogs, which did not confift in the introduction of a few of them into one particular place, but infested the whole land of Egypt, and yet on the prayer of Mofes they all died in the towns and villages in one day, and remained only in the river.

Allowing Mofes to have learned fome tricks of legerdemain of the Egyptian magicians, he could not have been more expert than his mafters, efpecially as he had been