'ledge. For who, I ask, led him to such a conside'ration? No other than his own conscious intelligence. He brought, it is said, of the fruit of the

ground an offering unto the Lord; for he saw and was persuaded that it behoved him to offer some of 6 his property to God, as the lord of all his possessions; not in consequence of any necessity in the Divine Being; but to testify the gratitude of his 'heart for the enjoyment of such beneficence.' And a little after, speaking of Abel as well as Cain: 'Nor had he any teacher, monitor, or counsellor ; ' but each of them was excited to this oblation by the teaching of his own conscience, and the wisdom 'given from above to mankind.' Addressing the people of Antioch, he says of Abel: Without hav

6

ing been instructed by any one, or received any law

respecting the first fruits, but of his own accord and taught by his own conscience, he brought that sacri'fice. To the authors already cited may be added Justin Martyr, Irenæus, Tertullian, Theodoret, Cyril of Alexandria, and some other ancient writers; who believed the Jewish sacrifices to have been instituted,† because the people, having been long accustomed to such modes of worship in Egypt, could scarcely have been confined to the worship of the one true God, without the indulgence, and introduction into their religion, of those rites to which they had been long habituated and were exceedingly attached. This cause for those rites would never have gained the approbation of such eminent men, if they had apprehended the same forms of religion to have been instituted by God at the beginning of the world. Nor could it

* Homil. 12. + Spenceri Dissert. de Urim et Thummim, c. 4. s. 7. TR.-Vide etiam Suiceri Thesaur, tom. 1. p. 1418, 1419.

escape their observation, that if God had any reason for originally enjoining sacrifices on the parents of mankind, the same reason, without any regard to customs long practised by the Egyptians, might have caused his injunction of the same rites on the Hebrews at their departure from Egypt.

6

The same opinion respecting the origin of sacrifices appears to have been held by Maimonides, as we shall soon see; and also by Rabbi Levi Ben Gerson, as his language sufficiently shews: Cain and Abel, as we have said, were very wise men; ' and so it came to pass, that when they had arrived at the proposed end of their labours, each brought 'from his possessions an offering to God. The reason of this oblation appears to me to have been, 'because they knew that all things which come into 'existence are under the administration of God, to 'whom be praise, and that God is their true cause; 'or perhaps they brought offerings of those things, because they understood that all things were certainly created by him.* They are followed by Rabbi Isaac Abarbinel: Adam and his sons offered sacri'fices, because they considered themselves as thereby worshipping God.'t With these, among more modern writers, agrees the very learned Grotius, who is of opinion, that Cain and Abel offered sacrifices, 'not by any divine command, but from the dictates ' of reason, that public honour ought to be rendered to God, and that the best way of doing this was by presenting to him those things which are most ' valuable to men.'

Eusebius of Cæsarea, from his observations on the sacrifices offered by Abel, Noah, Abraham, and

* In Genes. iv.

t In Præfat ad Levitic.

In Genes. iv. 3.

every man of eminent piety in those times, is supposed to have held a different opinion from his contemporaries respecting their origin. The design of 'this I apprehend, not to have been fortuitous, or of 'human origin, but to have been suggested by a divine judgment. For as pious perons, who were familiar with God and had their minds enlightened "by the divine spirit, saw that they needed a great remedy for the expiation of deadly sins, they con'cluded that a ransom for their salvation ought to be presented to God, the disposer of life and death. "And having nothing to consecrate to him, more ex'cellent or valuable than their own lives, they offered 'the brutes in their stead, sacrificing other lives in 'the room of their own.' From this passage it is confidently inferred by some, that Eusebius believed the first sacrifices to have been offered at the command of God. But the passage by no means warrants such a conclusion. For he has no reference here to sacrifices of inanimate objects, having before observed, that such oblations were of little avail: and the animals sacrificed by Abel, Noah, and Abraham, he represents as immolated not in obedience to any express command of God; but in compliance with the dictates of a divine reason, which was not common to every man, but peculiar to all persons of eminent piety. And to comprize all in few words, it was the opinion of Eusebius, that Cain sacrificed inanimate things wholly from his own natural inclination, but that all pious men, as Abel, Noah, and Abraham, taught by a kind of divine reasoning, as we have already stated, sacrificed animals.

These are the different opinions respecting the rise of sacrifices; a subject on which, for my own part, I

C

would rather be altogether silent, than affirm any thing as certain.* But before I proceed, it is proper

* TR.-Though the author professes, as he doubtless intended, to lay before his readers an impartial statement of opinions and arguments on both sides; the fuller detail and distinguished names brought forward in favour of the notion that sacrifices originated in human invention, are calculated to give to that hypothesis a preponderance to which it is by no means entitled. The assumptions by which its ablest advocates have endeavoured to account for the supposed invention, afford no satisfactory solution of the difficulties with which it is embarrassed.

The first sacrifices are pretended to have been gifts presented by men to God, as demonstrations of gratitude, expressions of penitence, or means of conciliating favour. But that by any conceivable appropriation or disposal of animals or vegetables, those animals or vegetables should be considered as given to an invisible and spiritual being, without some previous appointment associating the ideas and establishing a connection between the act and purpose, is a conjecture which derives no probability from experience, an imaginary case to which the history of man furnishes no parallel. The absurdity of supposing such an association of actions and ideas, independent of some previous appointment by which they were connected, renders it also equally improbable that such an appointment should have been the mere creature of human device. The want of connection founded in nature or discoverable by reason, between any action performed upon animals or vegetables and the idea of a gift to an invisible and spiritual being, is a consideration which I do not remember to have seen introduced into any discussion of this subject; but it appears to me sufficient, of itself, to invalidate the hypothesis of human invention, and to evince its entire incredibility. Perhaps it was this consideration which led Dr. Priestley, at one period, to regard sacrifices as arising from anthropomorphitical notions of God; but finding, it would seem, no ground for imputing such notions to Cain and Abel, and being unable to account for the commencement of such rites upon any principles of nature or reason, he afterwards declared his opinion in favour of their divine origin. Speaking of the offerings of Cain and Abel, he says: On the whole it seems most probable that men were instructed by the Divine Being himself in this ' mode of worship.' Notes on Gen. iv. 3.

The improbability of sacrifices having sprung from human invention applies to sacrificial oblations of every kind; but presses with peculiar force on those which involve the destruction of animal life. That the Creator would be honoured or appeased by the slaughter of his creatures without his command or permission, is one of the most unnatural of all suppositions. It is evident from the language of scripture, that animal food formed no part of human sustenance till after the deluge, when, for the first time, God granted it to Noah and his posterity, Genes. i. 29, 30.

to remark, that those who believe sacrifices to have originated in the free choice of each individual, though

ix. 3. And if the slaughter of animals in sacrifice was not a divine institution, and killing them for food had not yet been permitted, what reason can be assigned for believing, that before the flood men had any more right to take away the lives of the brutes than of each other? Unacquainted with the true origin of a rite which had been practised from time immemorial, the more intelligent and philosophical heathens, Pythagoras, Plato, and others, wondered how an institution so dismal and abhorrent from the divine nature, as it appeared to them, could enter into the minds of men and diffuse itself through the world. Kennicott's Two Diss. p. 203. This difficulty, inexplicable as it is on the principles of reason, completely disappears in the light of revelation.

Neither the narrative of Moses, nor any other part of the scripture, countenances the ascription of sacrifice to human invention; and the general tenour of the inspired volume is altogether at variance with such a supposition. Though the dispensations of revealed religion have exhibited many varieties in successive periods, the principles of the divine administration appear to have been the same under different economies. The language of the gospel is in perfect harmony with the law and the prophets : "In vain do they worship God, teaching for doctrines the commandments "of men." Matt. xv. 9. Mark vii. 7. Isaiah xxix. 13. And is it reasonable to believe, that "will-worship," which is altogether rejected by God under the New Testament, (Coloss. ii. 23.) was acceptable to him in the days of the patriarchs? But so it must have been, if sacrifice was a human invention. That, on the contrary, it was a divine institution, may well be inferred from the acceptance with which it was honoured. How this acceptance was testified in the case of Abel, is not recorded. It has been an ancient opinion, that his sacrifice was consumed by fire from heaven. Theodotion, a translator of the Old Testament into Greek, in the second century of the christian era, renders the latter part of Genesis iv. 4. "The Lord burnt, "or consumed, Abel's offering." (Pooli Synops. in loc.) But this, notwithstanding it obtained the approbation of Julian, must be acknowledged to be rather a paraphrase than a version. The acceptance, however, must have been testified in some way obvious to the senses: for the known reception of one oblation while the other was rejected is represented as the occasion of Cain's wrath which issued in the murder of his brother. (Genes. iv. 5—8.) And it is highly probable that Abel was favoured with the same miraculous token of approbation which often accompanied the sacrifices of the faithful in succeeding times. (Levit. ix. xxiv. Judg. vi. 21. I Kings xviii. 38. I Chron. xxi. 26. II Chron. vii. 1.) But whatever was the precise mode in which God evinced his "respect unto Abel "and to his offering," we may reasonably conclude it to have been supernatural; one whose meaning was well known from its having been previ