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Show en OF JUDAH THE PRESENT STATE ham, was circumcised. Israel, should have learned something of their names of the true God, and of their theology ;—and that various heathen nations should have brought down some traditionary notions of the creation, of the deluge, and Noah’s ark, and of some general accounts of early ancient tradition and revelation, (as questions may attach themselves to the subject eopling a continent so distant from their own, and of the vast dimensions of this new world, is not only m- are all less difficult, than to account are of Israel] when men had become flood, the nation, in after days, any tecedent to the ceremonial code. traditionary father of the Arabians, And iabepael, being himself a son of at Abt aaa hich these arts being once known, could neve r be the tribes of Israe! from all other nations; and it did distinguish and insulate them ; and other nations did not receive Israel’s ceremonial code as their religion. any observances of the ancient ceremomal law among among except day, this of the nations of the earth, at God; any the descendants of that ancient people of trines of doc more than we are to expect to flind the uf Guinea. Ce rfucius among the coloured race of some of the Arabs have practised circumcision; this eng cts makes nothing against us. Circumcisien was Deca’ lost. - But no objection is hence furnished agai nst our scheme. The know sedge of mechanic arts poss in early times has been lost by many nations. essed Noah aud his sons must have known considerable of these— arts, as appears in their builofdi theng ark. And his early posterity must have known something considerable scattered over the eastern expect to find pevinddind of being the ten tribes, from theirignorance of the me_Chanic artsy of writing, and of navigati on. Ancient | — knew something of these ; and some imag ine, | lat world, and had fallen into a state of yross idolatry and lt wasan economy designed to distinguish paganism. Hence we are not to they origin some have fea difficulty arising against the indi Kote ans” — hese were general facts anciently known ark, &c. to.all; while the ceremonial laws of Moses were re- ~ vealed and practised only inone for the these traditions on any other principle, than that the credible, butattended with moral impossibility ! It is jn no sense to be placed on a par with the fact of some nations retaining a tradition of the How naturally woul €ntious practice of many of the ceremonial laws in Israel; and cautiously maintain those traditions merely because they descended from their remote ancestor s : we certainly have found considerable of that very kind of evidence, which must eventually (and ata peri od notfar from the present) bring to light the desc endants of ancient Israel. And however many difficult savages of ancient Scythia should learn and adopt so much of the special rites of Israel’s ceremonial law, as has in fact been found among the American Indians, and that they should so firmly embrace them as to _ transmit them to their posterity for thousands of years, heathen ISRAEL, , derived this their practice from their remote anBut when we now find a race of men in the cons ci- roving But that the northern a 5 cestors. And Grotias de Veritate asserts) is nothing strange. it furnishes an incontestible argument in favour of the divinity of our bible. adee ae an a en d his descendants follow him in this rite; at least for some time. And the heathen nations being in the prac tice of offering sacrifices, furnishes no argument against us For sacrifices had been offered by the prog enitors of all the nations from the beginning, and were not at all peculiar to the ceremonial code. All heathen nations then Their solution of the difficulty wild and conjectural. is far more wild, and every way improbable ! That various heathen nations bordering on ancient events taught in AND enetenetheaiiee of t em, as appearsin a their building of Babel But how many of the descendants of thos e ancient mechanics lost this knowledge. And Israel in an outCast state might as well have lost it. It seems a fact that Israel have lost it, let them be who or where the may, Otherwise, they must have been kno wn in the Civilized world. Pt4j-fu— bru ~/) Ce | aA | om that the people who first migrated to this west orld did possess some knowledge of the mechas-Oo Se Kee |