ion of Paul was ennobled in all
its manifold instances, by its springing, not from so many express
directions, but from a principle, undeviating and perpetual in its
operation. In the infancy of the race, it would have been utterly
useless to reveal the grand principles of morals in any other way than
that which was adopted, viz. by exhibiting their application in various
instances. The Divine will was therefore made known in express
directions, probably very few in number at first, and gradually
increasing in number and importance, so as to enable observers, from
remarking the similar tendency of several, to infer a general principle
from them. All the records which we possess of the history of the race
to the calling of the Israelites out of Egypt, prove this to have been
the method adopted. The commands of God, and the promises and threats by
which they were sanctioned, bore an analogy, in their gradual elevation,
to those by which we influence an opening mind in its progress from the
first manifestation of intelligence to the age when the power of
conscience is recognizable. In the Mosaic system, a considerable advance
was made, a direct appeal to conscience being instituted, and the
gradual revelation of a moral government being provided for. Men were
then taught, not what we now know, that the relation between virtue and
happiness, vice and misery, is immutable (which they could not have
understood,) but that in their particular case, obedience to certain
laws would secure prosperity, and disobedience adversity. Such
obedience, the most virtuous were incited to render, from a fear and
love of God; but they could not have rendered it in any but specified
cases, because, not yet being made acquainted with the principle as a
principle, they could not direct its application for themselves. The
case was the same with the other great principle, Benevolence, as with
Piety; and, accordingly, the body of laws which was prepared for the
Israelites was voluminous, and their sanctions were expressed in a
copious variety of promises and threatenings, and embodied in a
burthensome ritual, consisting chiefly of penal acts. When the nation
had thus been exercised long enough to prepare it for entering on a new
course of moral agency (as we prepare a child for the spontaneous
exercise of filial duty and fraternal love by a discipline of express
commands and particular acts,) Christianity was dispensed, and men were
at length furnis