alluding to Balaam's story, "the dumb ass, speak"ing with man's voice, forbad the madness of the "prophet;" acknowledging him you see for a prophet, though, for the folly of loving the wages of unrighteousness, he calls him mad.

Balaam therefore was a prophet; for with the evidence of facts and the authority of an inspired apostle on our side, we will be confident in the assertion, though Origen and Calvin be against us. Balaam was a prophet. He lived in an age of gross idolatry, and prophesied to idolaters. In him, as I conceive, the prophetic order without the pale of the Mosaic church, which was now formed, was extinguished; for I find no traces in history, sacred or profane, of a true prophet out of Israel after the death of Balaam. He fell you know in the general carnage of the Midianites, and was himself among the first instances of God's vengeance on apostates. It is probable therefore that the prophecies which he delivered at Shittim were the last that were addressed to the old patriarchal church, now corrupt in the extreme, and on the verge of dissolution. It is remarkable that this church should be admonished by the last words of her last prophet of the impending vengeance, as the Jewish church by a greater prophet within a few years of her dissolution was

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admonished of her fate. It is remarkable that this last call of God to that apostatizing church should be the first occasion, upon record at least, upon which the Messiah is described in images of terror, as a warlike prince reducing the world by conquest, and putting his vanquished enemies to the sword. With these predictions of the Messiah, (predictions which by all expositors, Jews as well as Christian, by Rabbis of later times as well as by the more candid and more knowing Jews of earlier ages, are understood of the Messiah), with these predictions Balaam intermixes many brief but eloquent assertions of the first principles of natural religion

The omnipotence of the Deity, his universal providence, and the immutability of his counsels. And, to be a standing monument of these great truths, he leaves a very general but very exact prediction, of the fortunes of the empires and kingdoms that were at that time the most considerable, and of those that in succeeding ages were successively to arise and perish in their turns. And his images bear all the analogy to those of later prophets, of Daniel in particular, and the sublime author of the Apocalypse, which the language of a general sketch can bear to that of a minute detail; and the names and epithets which he applies to the Supreme Being are the very same which are used by Moses, Job, and the

inspired writers of the Jews; namely, God, the Almighty, the Most High, and Jehovah; which is a proof, that gross as the corruptions of idolatry were now become, the patriarchal religion was not sufficiently forgotten, for its language to be grown obsolete.

In this Balaam set the sun of prophecy in the horizon of the Gentile world, and yet a total night came not. For some ages a twilight glimmered in their sky, which gradually decayed and became at' last almost insensible, but began to brighten again during the captivity of the Jews under the Babylonian monarchs, and from that period continued to gather strength, till at length the morning star took its station over the stable at Bethlehem. The sun of righteousness arose to set no more, and the light again was clear and universal.

You will recollect what I advanced as a probable conjecture in a former part of these disquisitions, that upon the first appearance of idolatry, when the uninfected part of mankind would be taking all means to check the progress of the contagion, the traditional history of the creation, the deluge, and the promises to the first patriarchs, which at that time would probably be pretty perfect, would be

committed to writing. We may assert, I think, with more certainty, that the prophecies of Job and Balaam, and of other prophets of that period, if any other existed, (and many might, although their works and their very names have been long since forgotten;) it is more certain, I say, of the prophecies of these ages, that they would be committed to writing, than of the earlier traditions. For that letters were older than the beginnings of idolatry cannot be proved, though in my opinion it is more probable than the contrary. Whereas it is certain, not only that the Israelites had letters before the law, but that books and writing were in use in the days of Job in that part of the country where Job and Balaam lived; and if in use in the days of Job, certainly not out of use in the later days of Balaam. For although religion in these ages was upon the decline, arts and sciences were in a stage of progress and advancement.-That Balaam's prophecies, at Shittim in particular, were committed to writing among the Moabites and the Midianites, is, I think, incontestable. For to the Moabites and the Midianites they were delivered, not within hearing of the Israelites. And how did Moses, who heard them not, come by the knowledge of them, unless it were that they were commit to writing, and that the books of the Moabites or the Midianites fell into the con

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queror's hands? Moses, it is true, was an inspired writer, which may seem to some to account sufficiently for his knowledge of every thing he relates.

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But God, even in the more immediate interpositions of his providence, acts by natural means and second causes, so far as natural means and second causes may be made to serve the purpose. The influence, therefore, of the inspiring Spirit on the mind of an historian, can be nothing more than to secure him from mistake and falsity, by strengthening his memory, and by maintaining in his heart a religious love and reverence for truth, that he may be incapable of omission through forgetfulness, and may be invincibly fortified against all temptations to forge, conceal, disguise, or prevaricate. That inspiration ever was the means of conveying the first knowledge of facts to an historian's mind, is a very unreasonable supposition. It is to suppose an unnecessary miracle. For a miracle is always unnecessary where natural means might serve the purpose. And the supposition of an unnecessary miracle is always an unreasonable, and indeed a dangerous supposition. Unreasonable, because no evidence can prove it, and no plausible argument can be alleged for it; dangerous, because it leads