their
remote ancestors, than to the evidence of their own senses. [10]

[Footnote 9: For the enumeration of the Syrian and Arabian deities, it
may be observed, that Milton has comprised in one hundred and thirty
very beautiful lines the two large and learned syntagmas which Selden
had composed on that abstruse subject.]

[Footnote 10: "How long will this people provoke me? and how long will
it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shown among
them?" (Numbers xiv. 11.) It would be easy, but it would be unbecoming,
to justify the complaint of the Deity from the whole tenor of the Mosaic
history. Note: Among a rude and barbarous people, religious impressions
are easily made, and are as soon effaced. The ignorance which multiplies
imaginary wonders, would weaken and destroy the effect of real miracle.
At the period of the Jewish history, referred to in the passage from
Numbers, their fears predominated over their faith,--the fears of an
unwarlike people, just rescued from debasing slavery, and commanded to
attack a fierce, a well-armed, a gigantic, and a far more numerous race,
the inhabitants of Canaan. As to the frequent apostasy of the Jews,
their religion was beyond their state of civilization. Nor is it
uncommon for a people to cling with passionate attachment to that of
which, at first, they could not appreciate the value. Patriotism and
national pride will contend, even to death, for political rights which
have been forced upon a reluctant people. The Christian may at
least retort, with justice, that the great sign of his religion, the
resurrection of Jesus, was most ardently believed, and most resolutely
asserted, by the eye witnesses of the fact.--M.]

The Jewish religion was admirably fitted for defence, but it was
never designed for conquest; and it seems probable that the number of
proselytes was never much superior to that of apostates. The divine
promises were originally made, and the distinguishing rite of
circumcision was enjoined, to a single family. When the posterity of
Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose
mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself
the proper and as it were the national God of Israel and with the most
jealous care separated his favorite people from the rest of mankind. The
conquest of the land of Canaan was accompanied with so many wonderful
and with so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were