st," they heard the awful voice of
God pronounce the eternal law, impressing it on their hearts with
circumstances of terror, but without those encouragements and those
excellent promises, which were afterwards offered to mankind by Jesus
Christ. Thus were the great laws of morality restored to the Jews, and
through them transmitted to other nations; and by that means a great
restraint was opposed to the torrent of vice and impiety which began to
prevail over the world.

18. To these moral precepts; which are of perpetual and universal
obligation, were superadded, by the ministration of Moses, many peculiar
institutions, wisely adapted to different ends--either to fix the
memory of those past deliverances, which were figurative of a future and
far greater salvation--to place inviolable barriers between the Jews and
the idolatrous nations, by whom they were surrounded--or, to be the
civil law by which the community was to be governed.

19. To conduct this series of events, and to establish these laws with
his people, God raised up that great prophet Moses, whose faith and
piety enabled him to undertake and execute the most arduous enterprizes,
and to pursue, with unabated zeal, the welfare of his countrymen; even
in the hour of death, this generous ardour still prevailed; his last
moments were employed in fervent prayers for their prosperity, and, in
rapturous gratitude, for the glimpse vouchsafed him of a Saviour, far
greater than himself, whom God would one day raise up to his people.

20. Thus did Moses, by the excellency of his faith, obtain a glorious
pre-eminence among the saints and prophets in heaven; while on earth he
will be for ever revered as the first of those benefactors to mankind,
whose labours for the public good have endeared their memory to all
ages.

_Of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy._

21. The next book is Leviticus, which contains little besides the laws
for the peculiar ritual observance of the Jews, and therefore affords no
great instruction to us now; you may pass it over entirely; and for the
same reason you may omit the first eight chapters of Numbers. The rest
of Numbers is chiefly a continuation of the history, with some ritual
laws.

22. In Deuteronomy, Moses makes a recapitulation of the foregoing
history, with zealous exhortations to the people, faithfully to worship
and obey that God who had worked such amazing wonders for them: he
promises them the noblest temporal blessin