ader, Moses, it naturally accepted from the latter
all subsequent instructions, as laws emanating from the same divine
source.

LXV. The word of God pronounced in that memorable instant, and known
since under the name of Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, could not,
however, embrace the whole sum of religious truths that were intended to
be revealed, because it would have been humanly impossible to the people
to persist in that extraordinary state of intimate spiritual or
prophetic relation with the Deity, till the end of all the revelation.
Therefore, the Decalogue exhibits only some fundamental points, which,
from their importance, deserved to be more prominently impressed; it
marks the outlines of the foundation upon which the edifice of revealed
religion was afterwards to be raised. Yet, although the promulgation of
the entire divine code was a work reserved for the blessed legislator
Moses, the Ten Commandments present, nevertheless, a compendious but
complete system of institutions, referring to all those social and
religious subjects, which most interest mankind. In fact, the three
relations of man towards his Creator, his fellow-man, and himself, are
traced in the Decalogue in a masterly manner, classified according to
their order, and elucidated by placing prominently forward one
culminating point, which serves to determine their true character. Such
is the wise economy of all revealed laws, that generally avoiding
abstractions, they select as a standard one special case of the most
interesting, and leave it to thy care of the human understanding to
generalize, and deduce from it universal theories.[2] Consequently, on
analysing the ten emanations of the Divine Will, we must transfer
mentally each of them to the class of duties to which it belongs, and
consider it as intended to represent all that class.

[Note 2: The author has already informed us, that he confines
himself, in this book, to the enunciation of principles, and leaves to
teachers the task of demonstrating, developing, and applying them, in
course of instruction. Nevertheless, as this proposition recurs more
than once in these pages, and contains a very important principle, it is
perhaps desirable, for the general reader, to offer here an elucidation,
by the following examples of its application.

We are taught, "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or his ass going astray,
thou shalt surely bring it back to him again" (Exod. xxiii. 4). We are
to under