and assist, exalt and highly aggrandize, our most gracious sovereign Lord, King George the third, our most gracious Queen Charlotte, his Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales, and all the Royal family: May the Supreme King of Kings, through his infinite mercy, grant them life, and preserve them from all manner of troubles and danger; and cause his enemies to fall before him, and grant him to reign prosperously; may the Supreme King of Kings, through his infinite mercy, inspire him and his counsellors, the nobles, and states of his kingdom, with benevolence towards us and all Israel; in his and our days may Judah be saved, and Israel dwell in safety; and may the Redeemer come unto Zion; which God in his infinite mercy grant, and we will say, Amen."

The modern Jewish sects are, 1st, The Samaritans, who continue to possess what was formerly called Samaria. They still retain their high priest and priests, and offer sacrifices on mount Gerizim. The Rabbinists, however, refuse to acknowledge them as Jews, and call them Cuthites.-2d, The Sadducees, who derived their name from Sadoc. They have been reduced to a small number ever since the destruction of Jerusalem; almost all the Jews considering them as heretics. Their tenets were subversive even of natural religion, as they denied not only the doctrine of the resurrection, and the existence of Angels, but also the immortality of the soul. It has been the subject of controversy whether they rejected all the Old Testament Scriptures, besides the writings of Moses.The third sect is the Rabbinists, or Talmudists. They consider the oral traditions of the Talmuds to be of the same authority with the books of the Old Testament, and to be the only key that opens to the minds of men their genuine meaning.-4th, The Karaites, who reject the two Tal

muds, one of which is called the Talmud of Jerusalem, the other the Talmud of Babylon. They are collections of the doctrines and morality of the Jews. The latter sect is thus disencumbered from those legends and fables, which are calculated to lead men into inextricable mazes of error and folly. The numbers of this sect are, however, comparatively few, and they are very unjustly reproached by the Talmudistic Jews, who call them by the name of Sadducees.

So widely, of late, have the ravages of infidelity been extended, that many individuals of the Jews, as well as among nominal Christians, have either openly deserted the standard of Revelation, or, while they preserve the appearances of being its followers, have secretly entered into a confederacy with its enemies. Many of the Jews, in France, have openly revolted from the principles of their own religion, while they continue tenacious of its name and forms. Mr. Levi speaks of some of their nation, to whom all the hopes of a Messiah's coming to redeem them are a subject of ridicule. Some of them he represents, as having imbibed the doctrines of the deistical school of philosophy, and having thus exchanged Judaism for the principles of infidelity. Others of them he delineates, as men who have been corrupted by the acquisition of wealth, and so dazzled by the splendour in which they are able to live, that they neither look for nor desire a restoration. The same author tells us that "Even those of the nation, that have not the least grain of religion in them, would yet be highly offended, at being called a Christian, or a Gentile, or an Apostate."* Al.

* Levi's Dissertations, p. p. 243, 245.

most all our deistical writers have acted precisely the same part to Christianity, that the infidel Jews have done to the Law and the Prophets. Such were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bolingbroke, Shaftesbury, Woolston, Tindal, Hume, &c. &c. Such rascality appears to be attached to Deism that even when it seizes upon a nobleman, or a philosopher, it degrades him into a despicable hypocrite, who smiles and professes friendship to religion, even at the moment when he is aiming a stab at her very existence.

The modern Jews seem to have made a rapid progress in conciliating the affections of deistical writers. "There is one thing," says a very respectable writer, in an excellent address to the Jews, "which has particularly struck my mind, and which I would earnestly recommend to your consideration, namely, the temper of modern infidels towards your fathers, towards you, and towards us.

"You need not be told that deistical writers invariably treat your fathers with scorn and dislike. Just as Appion and other Greek writers poured contempt upon your nation; just as the more ancient Moabites reproached, and proudly magnified themselves against the people of the Lord of Hosts; so do all your modern infidels. But from the time that your fathers rejected Him, in whom we believe as the Lord Messiah, though you have been exposed to the chastisements of Heaven, and to much injurious treatment from pretended Christians; yet deists, the common enemies of revelation, have been, comparatively speaking, reconciled to you. So, however, it appears I do not recollect to have met with a single reflection upon you, in any of their writings. On the contrary, they seem to feel themselves near akin to you. Your enmity to Jesus seems to be the price of their for

to me.

giveness: like Herod and Pontius Pilate, you became friends on the day of his crucifixion. Mr. Paine, though his writings abound in sneers against your nation, prior to its rejection of Christ, yet appears to be well reconciled to you, and willing to admit your lame account of the body of Jesus being stolen away. Ought you not to be alarmed at these things? Seriously examine whether you have not forsaken the God of your fathers, and become the friends and allies of men who hate both Him and them.

"The hatred of infidels has long been transferred from you to us. Whether, in the language of the New Testamen, we be the true children of Abraham, or not, we inherit that reproach and dislike from unbelievers, which was heretofore the portion of the godly Israelites. On what account were your fathers hated by the practical atheists of their day? Was it not because of their devotedness to God? It was this in David that provoked the resentment of the children of Belial, and rendered them his determined enemies. They were continually jeering at his prayers, his tears, and his trust in Jehovah; turning that, which in reality was his glory, into shame: and afflicting him in his affliction by scornfully inquiring, Where is thy God? Such is the treatment which the godly part of your nation received in all ages, both from heathens abroad, and impious characters at home, and such is the treatment which serious Christians continue to receive from ungodly men to this day but are you hated and reproached on this account?"*

The Ten Tribes of Israel are now no longer to be distinguished, like the Jews, by their resolute adherence to the

The Gospel its Own Witness, p. p. 251, 252.

religion of their ancestors. The traces by which modern travellers have endeavoured to explore the places of their abode, are many of them equivocal, and all of them unsatisfactory. I shall here present the reader with the result of Dr. Buchanan's inquiries. His well known integrity removes all suspicion of any design to impose upon the world: his opportunities of obtaining correct information were of the most favourable kind; and his penetration was such as to render him a competent judge of the facts which came under his review. "The tribes of Israel are no longer to be inquired after by name. The purpose for which they were once divided into tribes was accomplished, when the genealogy of the Messiah was traced to the stem of David. Neither do the Israelites themselves know, certainly, from what families they, are descended. And this is a chief argument against the Jews, to which the Author never heard that a Jew could make a sensible reply. 'The tribe of Judah was selected as that from which the Messiah should come; and behold, the Jews do not know which of them are of the tribe of Judah.

"While the Author was amongst the Jews of Malabar, he made frequent inquiries concerning the Ten Tribes. When he mentioned that it was the opinion of some, that they had migrated from the Chaldean provinces, he was asked to what country he supposed they had gone, and whether he had ever heard of their moving in a great army in such an expedition.

"It will be easy perhaps to show, that the great body of the Ten Tribes remain to this day in the countries to which they were first carried captives. If we can discover where they were in the first century of the Christian Era, which was seven hundred years after the car