during the long period
which clasped between the Egyptian and the Babylonian servitudes, the
hopes as well as fears of the Jews appear to have been confined within
the narrow compass of the present life. [58] After Cyrus had permitted
the exiled nation to return into the promised land, and after Ezra had
restored the ancient records of their religion, two celebrated sects,
the Sadducees and the Pharisees, insensibly arose at Jerusalem. [59] The
former, selected from the more opulent and distinguished ranks of
society, were strictly attached to the literal sense of the Mosaic law,
and they piously rejected the immortality of the soul, as an opinion
that received no countenance from the divine book, which they revered as
the only rule of their faith. To the authority of Scripture the
Pharisees added that of tradition, and they accepted, under the name of
traditions, several speculative tenets from the philosophy or religion
of the eastern nations. The doctrines of fate or predestination, of
angels and spirits, and of a future state of rewards and punishments,
were in the number of these new articles of belief; and as the
Pharisees, by the austerity of their manners, had drawn into their party
the body of the Jewish people, the immortality of the soul became the
prevailing sentiment of the synagogue, under the reign of the Asmonaean
princes and pontiffs. The temper of the Jews was incapable of contenting
itself with such a cold and languid assent as might satisfy the mind of
a Polytheist; and as soon as they admitted the idea of a future state,
they embraced it with the zeal which has always formed the
characteristic of the nation. Their zeal, however, added nothing to its
evidence, or even probability: and it was still necessary that the
doctrine of life and immortality, which had been dictated by nature,
approved by reason, and received by superstition, should obtain the
sanction of divine truth from the authority and example of Christ.

[Footnote 57: The right reverend author of the Divine Legation of Moses
as signs a very curious reason for the omission, and most ingeniously
retorts it on the unbelievers. * Note: The hypothesis of Warburton
concerning this remarkable fact, which, as far as the Law of Moses, is
unquestionable, made few disciples; and it is difficult to suppose that
it could be intended by the author himself for more than a display of
intellectual strength. Modern writers have accounted in various ways fo