"far as I have had opportunity to apply it, "will fully answer every particular that Dr. Spencer has offered; which is this; that he " is able to produce no one ceremony or usage practised both in the Religion of Abraham

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or Moses and in that of the Heathen na❝tions, but that it may be proved that it was "used by Abraham or Moses, or by some of "the true worshippers of God, earlier than "by any of the heathen nations." Whoever examines the sacred history with attention, will discover that the principal Rites of the Levitical Law were in use before the time of Moses, that is, during the Patriarchal State of the Church: and I have seen a work of the last century in the Bodleian Library with the Title of Lex ante Legem. The subject is curious, and cannot be without its use if treated with judgment. With regard to this Law in particular concerning the distinction of animals the case is very plain; because it appears from the practice of Noah, that such a distinction had taken place before the Flood. Here Dr. Spencer is at his wit's end, being driven to the supposition or presumption, that beasts were called clean and unclean by anti

Shuckford's Connect. vol. i. p. 157.

G 3

cipation

cipation: but they were not only called'so; for they were actually taken as such, and applied as such, as effectually as by the institution and practice of the Mosaic Law.

XII. It happens, however, that the reasonings of this learned writer lead him frequently astray from his principles, so as to render his work remarkably inconsistent. Thus, for example, he rejects with scorn the figurative sense of this Law, as a sort of light bread offensive to the taste of every intelligent Reader: unhappily alluding to that other figurative Diet, which the carnal Israelites rejected in the wilderness. Yet he hath asserted its figurative sense as expressly as I have done, and hath even proved it by a text of the New Testament, which had never occurred in my own researches, With regard to its figurative use in separating the Jews from the Gentiles, he reasons thus-" Why

b

should the Jews withdraw themselves so

rigorously from the Company of the hea"thens, unless they were enjoined so to do "by this law concerning the distinction of

• Ut mundorum et immundorum animalium in historiâ diluvi¡ nala wgeλn mentionem fecisse videatur. Lib. i. cap. v. § v. Lib. i. cap. v. § iv,

"meats?

"meats? for whosoever shall diligently exa"mine the Book of Moses, will see that there "is no other law which clearly and expressly obliges the Jews to avoid all familiarity "with foreign nations." In another place he suspects it was intended as an admonition to mental sanctification; and adds a learned and proper remark to confirm his suspicion. "God ordained this distinction of meats, "that the puerile nation of the Hebrews might be led by an application of this law "to the first elements of sanctity and actual purity. And this conjecture is founded upon the reason God himself hath assigned "for this institution; for after he had de"livered the law about separating the clean "animal from the unclean, he immediately “adds, be ye holy, for I the Lord your God

am holy. Which words St. Peter applies,

"not to legal but to evangelical sanctity, "such as we should aspire to through the "whole course of our lives. I must not "deny that the text of Leviticus, in the out"ward Letter, requires only a sort of legal "sanctity, extending merely to corporeal purification:" (i. e. that the Letter of the Law is the Letter of it) "but it is agreeable "to the umbratic nature of that Law, that

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we should believe those words to have con"tained a more sacred meaning at the bot-`

દ

tom, and to have directed the Jews to a "sort of purity properly so called, and con"formable to that of the Divine Nature it

self, under the figure of external purifica"tion." This passage affirms of the subject in general what I have endeavoured to shew of its several particulars: for that which is true of the whole must be true of the parts, So that we have no opposition from the inge nious Dr. Spencer, but so far only as he is opposite to himself.

XIII. I think it must occur, after what hath been said, that the All-wise Creator had moral ends in view, as well as natural, in the formation of the World, and particularly in the establishment of the Brute Economy, Reason is a principle more sublime than Instinct; yet Reason may be greatly improved, and the benefit of Society may be as greatly advanced, by a proper attention to the various instincts of animals, As the Sluggard is reproved by the example of the provident and industrious Ant, other men may see other mistakes and failings rectified by the conduct of other animals; so that it may be said with propriety of them, as it was said of the Ant→ Consider

Consider their ways and be wise. and be wise. I think it is but just to assert, that this moral use of the animal Creation was originally intended in the formation of the World: because it would be a supposition unworthy of God, that the works of nature should be capable of answering any good end, which his wisdom did not foresee, and consequently design.

XIV. The manners of mankind, being derived more from Custom and Education than from Nature, are subject to vary with their circumstances, and are scarcely exempt even from the mutability of fashion itself. But brute animals are not free agents, because they were not designed to be moral agents; for morality, intellectual purity, and religious wisdom, are and must be by their nature the objects of choice. Brutes are therefore neither able to disguise their dispositions, nor to change the objects of their attention; on which account they are a never-failing source of instruction, holding out to mankind the same admonitions in every age of the world.

In respect of its certainty and immutability, Instinct is far superior to Reason; but man has this unquestionable superiority over the brutes, that he views them not brutishly, as

they