mentators have written a prodigious number of volumes to justify Abraham's conduct, and to explain away the errors in chronology. To these commentaries we must refer the reader; they are all composed by men of nice and acute perceptions, excellent metaphysicians, and by no means pedants.

For the rest, this name of Bram, or Abram, was famous in Judea and in Persia. Several of the learned even assert, that he was the same legislator whom the Greeks called Zoroaster. Others say that he was the Brama of the Indians; which is not demonstrated. But it appears very reasonable to many, that this Abraham was a Chaldean or a Persian; from whom the Jews afterwards boasted of having descended, as the Franks did of their descent from Hector, and the Britons from Tubal. It cannot be denied that the Jewish nation were a very modern horde; that they did not establish themselves on the borders of Phoenicia until a very late period; that they were surrounded by ancient states, whose language they adopted, receiving from them even the name of Israel, which is Chaldean, from the testimony of the Jew Flavius Josephus himself. We know that they took the names of the Angels from the Babylonians, and that they called God by the names of Eloi or Eloa, Adonai, Jehovah or Hiao, after the Phoenicians. It is probable that they knew the name of Abraham or Ibrahim only through the Babylonians; for the ancient religion of all the countries from the Euphrates to the Oxus was called Kish Ibrahim or Milat Ibrahim. This is confirmed by all the researches made on the spot by the learned Hyde.

The Jews, then, treat, their history and ancient fable as their clothes-men treat their old coats-they turn them and sell them for new at as high a price as possible. It is a singular instance of human stupidity, that we have so long considered the Jews as a nation which taught all others, while their historian Josephus himself confesses the contrary.

It is difficult to penetrate the shades of antiquity; but it is evident that all the kingdoms of Asia were in a very flourishing state before the wandering horde of

Arabs, called Jews, had a small spot of earth which they called their own,-when they had neither a town, nor laws, nor even a fixed religion. When, therefore, we see an ancient rite or an ancient opinion established in Egypt or Asia, and also amongst the Jews, it is very natural to suppose that this small, newly-formed, ignorant, stupid people, copied, as well as they were able, the ancient, flourishing, and industrious nation. It is on this principle that we must judge of Judea, Biscay, Cornwall, &c. Most certainly triumphant Rome did not in any thing imitate Biscay or Cornwall; and he must be either very ignorant or a great knave, who would say that the Jews taught anything to the Greeks.

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SECTION III.

It must not be thought that Abraham was known only to the Jews: on the contrary, he is renowned throughout Asia. This name, which signifies father of a people in more Oriental languages than one, was given to some inhabitant of Chaldea, from whom several nations have boasted of descending. The pains which the Arabs and the Jews took to establish their descent from this patriarch, render it impossible for even the greatest Pyrrhoneans to doubt of there having been an Abraham.

The Hebrew Scriptures make him the son of Terah, while the Arabs say that Terah was his grand-father, and Azar his father, in which they have been followed by several Christians. The interpreters are of fortytwo different opinions with respect to the year in which Abraham was brought into the world, and I shall not hazard a forty-third. It also appears, by the dates, that Abraham lived sixty years longer than the text allows him; but mistakes in chronology do not destroy the truth of a fact. Supposing even that the book which speaks of Abraham had not been so sacred as was the law, it is not therefore less certain that Abraham existed. The Jews distinguished books written by inspired men, from books composed by particular inspiration. How, indeed, can it be believed that God dictated false dates?

Philo the Jew of Suidas, relates that Terah, the father or grand-father of Abraham, who dwelt at Ur in Chaldea, was a poor man who gained a livelihood by making little idols, and that he was himself an idolater. If so, that ancient religion of the Sabeans, who had no idols, but worshipped the heavens, had not then, perhaps, been established in Chaldea; or, if it prevailed in one part of the country, it is very probable that idolatry was predominant in the rest. It seems, that in those times each little horde had its religion, as each family had its own peculiar customs; all were tolerated, and all were peaceably confounded. Laban, the father-inlaw of Jacob, had idols. Each clan was perfectly willing that the neighbouring clan should have its gods, and contented itself with believing that its own were the mightiest.

The Scripture says that the God of the Jews, who intended to give them the land of Canaan, commanded Abraham to leave the fertile country of Chaldea, and go towards Palestine, promising him that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed. It is for theologians to explain, by allegory and mystical sense, how all the nations of the earth were to be blessed in a seed from which they did not descend, since this much-to-be-venerated mystical sense cannot be made the object of a research purely critical. A short time after these promises, Abraham's family was afflicted by famine, and went into Egypt for corn. It is singular that the Hebrews never went into Egypt, but when pressed by hunger; for Jacob afterwards sent his chil dren on the same errand.

Abraham, who was then very old, went this journey with his wife. Sarah, aged sixty-five: she was very handsome, and Abraham feared that the Egyptians; smitten by her charms, would kill him in order to en joy her transcendent beauties: he proposed to her that she should pass for his sister, &c. Human nature must at that time have possessed a vigour which time and luxury have since very much weakened. This was the opinion of all the ancients; it has even been asserted that Helen was seventy when she was carried off by

Paris. That which Abraham had foreseen came to pass the Egyptian youth found his wife charming, notwithstanding her sixty-five years; the king himself fell in love with her, and placed her in his seraglio, though, probably, he had younger females there; but the Lord plagued the king and his seraglio with very great sores. The text does not tell us how the king came to know that this dangerous beauty was Abraham's wife; but it seems that he did come to know it, and restored her.

Sarah's beauty must have been unalterable; for twenty-five years afterwards, when she was ninety years old, pregnant, and travelling with her husband through the dominions of a king of Phoenicia named Abimelech, Abraham, who had not yet corrected himself, made her a second time pass for his sister. The Phoenician king was as sensible to her attractions as the king of Egypt had been; but God appeared to this Abimelech in a dream, and threatened him with death if he touched his new mistress. It must be confessed that Sarah's conduct was as extraordinary as the lasting nature of her charms.

The singularity of these adventures was probably the reason why the Jews had not the same sort of faith in their histories which they had in their Leviticus. There was not a single iota of their law in which they did not believe; but the historical part of their Scriptares did not demand the same respect. Their conduct in regard to their ancient books may be compared to that of the English, who received the laws of St. Edward without absolutely believing that St. Edward cured the scrofula; or to that of the Romans, who, while they obeyed their primitive laws, were not obliged to believe in the miracles of the sieve filled with water, the ship drawn to the shore by a vestal's girdle, the stone cut with a razor, and so forth. Therefore the historian Josephus, though strongly attached to his form of worship, leaves his readers at liberty to believe just so much as they choose of the ancient prodigies which he relates. For the same reason the Sadducees were permitted not to believe in the Angels, although, the

Angels are so often spoken of in the Old Testament; but these same Sadducees were not allowed to neglect the prescribed feasts, fasts, and ceremonies. This part of Abraham's history (the journies into Egypt and Phoenicia) proves that great kingdoms were already established, while the Jewish nation existed in a single family; that there already were laws, since without them a great kingdom cannot exist; and consequently that the law of Moses, which was posterior, was not the first law. It is not necessary for a law to be divine, that it should be the most ancient of all. God is undoubtedly the master of time. It would, it is true, appear more conformable to the faint light of reason, that God, having to give a law, should have given it at the first to all mankind; but if it be proved that he proceeds in a different way, it is not for us to question him.

The remainder of Abraham's history is subject to great difficulties. God, who frequently appeared to and made several treaties with him, one day sent three angels to him in the valley of Mamre. The patriarch gaye them bread, veal, butter, and milk, to eat. The three spirits dined, and after dinner they sent for Sarah, who had baked the bread. One of the angels, whom the text calls the Lord, the Eternal, promised Sarah that, in the course of a year, she should have a son. Sarah, who was then ninety-four, while her husband was nearly a hundred, laughed at the promise, a proof that Sarah confessed her decrepitude,a proof that, according to the Scripture itself, human nature was not then very different from what it is now. Nevertheless, the following year, as we have already seen, this aged woman, after becoming pregnant, captivated King Abimelech. Certes, to consider these stories as natural, we must either have a species of understanding quite different from that which we have at present, or regard every trait in the life of Abraham as a miracle, or believe that it is only an allegory; but whichever way we turn, we cannot escape embarrassment. For instance, what are we to make of God's promise to Abraham that he would give to him and