The Truth of the Christian Religion with Jean Le Clerc's Notes and Additions - Hugo Grotius Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics

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it the more easily of God: Beside, whatever of this Nature is done by such Beings, we conceive God does by them, or wisely permits them to do them; in the same manner as in well regulated Kingdoms, nothing is done otherwise than the Law directs, but by the Will of the Supreme Governor.

      Now that some Miracles have really been seen, (though it should seem doubtful from the Credit of all other Histories) the Jewish Religion alone may easily convince us: which though it has been a long time destitute of Humane Assistance, nay exposed to Contempt and Mockery, yet it remains (a) to this very Day, in almost all parts of the World; <22> when

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      (a) all other Religions (except the Christian, which is as it were the Perfection of the Jewish) have either disappeared as soon as they were forsaken by the Civil Power and Authority, (as all the Pagan Religions did;) or else they are yet maintained by the same Power as Mahometanism is: For if any one should ask, whence it is that the Jewish Religion hath taken so deep Root in the Minds of all the Hebrews, as never to be plucked out; there can be no other possible Cause assigned or imagined than this; That the present Jews received it from their Parents, and they from theirs, and so on, till you come to the Age in which Moses and Joshua lived; they received, I say, (b) by a certain and uninterrupted Tradition, the Miracles which were worked as in other Places, so more especially at their coming out of Aegypt, in their Journey, and at their Entrance into Canaan; of all which, their Ancestors themselves were Witnesses. Nor is it in the least credible, that a People of so obstinate a Disposition, could ever be persuaded any otherwise, to submit to a Law loaded with so many Rites and <23> Ceremonies; or that wise Men, amongst the many Distinctions of Religion which Humane Reason might invent, should chuse Circumcision; which could not be performed (c) without great Pain, and (d) was laughed at by all Strangers, and had nothing to recommend it but the Authority of God.

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      This also gives the greatest Credit imaginable to the Writings of Moses, in which these Miracles are recorded to Posterity; not only because there was a settled Opinion and constant Tradition amongst the Jews, that this Moses was appointed by the express Command of God himself to be the Leader and Captain of this People; but also because (as is very evident) he did not make his own Glory and Advantage his principal Aim, because He himself relates those Errors of his own, which He could have concealed; and delivered the Regal and Sacerdotal Dignity to others, (permitting his own Posterity to be reduced only to common Levites.) All which plainly show, that he had no occasion to falsify in his History; as the Style of it further evinces, it being free from that Varnish and Colour, which uses to give Credit to Romances; and is very natural and easy, and agreeable to the Matter of which it treats. Moreover, another Argument for the undoubted Antiquity of Moses’s Writings, which no other Writings can pretend to, is this; That the Greeks (from whom all other Nations derived their Learning) own, that they (a) had their Letters from others; which

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      Letters <24> of theirs, have the same Order, Name (a) and Shape, as the Syriack or Hebrew: And further still, the most antient (b) Attick Laws, from whence the <25> Roman were afterwards taken, owe their Original to the Law of Moses.

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      To these we may add the Testimony of a great Number, who were Strangers to the Jewish Religion, which shows that the most ancient Tradition among all Nations, is exactly agreeable to the Relation of Moses. For his Description of the Original of the World, is almost the very same as in the (a) ancient Phoenician Histories which are tran-<26>slated by Philo Biblius

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      from Sanchuniathon’s Col-<27><28>lection; and a good Part of it is to be found (a) among the Indians (b) and Egyptians; whence it is,

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      <29><30> that, (a) in Linus, (b) Hesiod, and many other <31> Greek Writers, mention is made of a Chaos, (sig-<32>nified by some under the Name

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      of an Egg,) and of the framing of Animals, and also of Man’s Formation after the Divine Image, and the Dominion given him over all living Creatures; which are to be seen in many Writers, particularly (a) in <33> Ovid,

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      who transcribed them from the Greek. That <34> all Things were made by the Word of God, is <35> asserted by (a) Epicharmus, and (b) the

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      Platonists; <36> and before them, by the most antient Writer, (I do not mean of those Hymns which go under his Name,) but of those Verses which were (a) of Old called Orpheus’s; not because Orpheus composed

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      them, but because they contained his Doctrines. (a) And <37> Empedocles acknowledged, that the Sun was not the Original Light, but the Receptacle of Light, (the Storehouse and Vehicle of Fire, as the antient Christians express it.) (b) Aratus, and (c) Catullus thought the Divine Residence was above the starry Orb; in which, Homer says, there is a continual Light. (d) Thales taught from the antient Schools, That God was the oldest of Beings, because not Begotten; that the World was most beautiful, because the Workmanship of God; that Darkness was before Light, which latter we find (e) in Orpheus’s Verses, (f) and Hesiod; whence it was, that (g) the <38> Nations who were most tenacious of antient

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      Customs, reckoned the Time by Nights. (a) Anaxagoras affirmed, that all Things were regulated by the Supreme Mind; (b) Aratus, that the <39> Stars were made by God; (c) Virgil, from the Greeks, that Life was infused

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      into Things by the Spirit of God; (a) Hesiod, (b) Homer, <40> and (c)

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      Callimachus, that Man was formed of Clay; lastly, (a) Maximus Tyrius asserts, that it <41> was a constant Tradition received by all Nations, that there was One Supreme God, the Cause of all Things. And we learn (b) from Josephus, (c) Philo, (d) Tibullus, (e) Clemens Alexandrinus, and (f)

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      Lucian (for I need not mention the Hebrews) that the Memory of the Seven Days Work was preserved not only among the Greeks and Italians, by honouring the Seventh Day; but also (a) amongst the Celtae and Indians, who all measured the Time by Weeks; as we learn from (b) Philostratus, (c) Dion <42> Cassius, and Justin Martyr; and also (d) the most ancient Names of the Days. The Egyptians tell us, that at first Men led their Lives (e) in great Simplicity, (f) their Bodies being naked; whence arose the Poet’s Fiction of the

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