§ 23: Again. The absence of these doctrines in the writings of the Old Testament in no way disproves their divinity. Moses was surely sent from God, even though the sanction of his law extended only to this life. For why should it extend further? He was sent only to the Israelites, to the Israelites of that time, and his mission was perfectly suited to the knowledge, capacities, and the inclinations of the Israelites of that time, as well as to their future destiny. That is enough.
§ 24: [William] Warburton* should have gone this far and no further. But the learned man overstretched his bow. Not content that the absence of those doctrines was no discredit to the divine mission of Moses, he even construed their absence as proof of the divinity of Moses’ mission. If he had only sought to base his proof on the suitability of such a law to such a people! But he sought refuge in a continuous miracle that stretched unbroken from Moses to Christ, by which God made every individual Jew just as happy or as unhappy as he deserved to be based on his level of obedience or disobedience to the law. This miracle compensated for the absence of those doctrines without which no state can endure, and this compensation [Warburton argued] proves precisely what the absence, at first glance, seemed to deny.
§ 25: How fortunate it was that Warburton could find nothing to verify, or even make probable, [the existence of] this continuing miracle in which he saw the essential element of Israelite theocracy. For had he been able to, he really would have made the difficulty insuperable – for me at least. For that which was supposed to establish the divine character of Moses’ mission would have actually cast doubt on the matter; and while God certainly did not intend to reveal the matter then, he surely did not intend to hinder it either.
§ 26: I will explain myself by describing the opposite of revelation. A primer for children may very well pass over in silence this or that important element of the science or art that it expounds, if, according to the judgment of the teacher, it is not yet appropriate for the capacities of the children for whom he is writing. But the primer must, under no circumstances, contain anything that will block the children’s path to those important withheld elements or serve to divert them. Rather all avenues to these elements must be scrupulously left open to them; and to divert the children from even one of these paths, or to cause them to enter it later than they need, would be enough to turn the mere incompleteness of the primer into a substantial fault.
§ 27: Thus the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and future recompense could just as well be omitted from the writings of the Old Testament, the primers of the ancient Israelites, a primitive people undisciplined in thought. But those writings could, under no circumstances, contain anything that might in any way delay the people for whom they were written on the path to this great truth. And what, to say the least, would have delayed the people more than to have that marvelous recompense promised in this very life, and promised by one who makes no promises that he does not keep.
* William Warburton (1698-1779). English literary critic and churchman, Bishop of Gloucester from 1759. In Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737-41), “Warburton argues that both the Jews' special protection by Divine Providence and the truth of Christian revelation can be ascertained by the Jews having a strong social morality without any doctrine of future rewards or punishments, and by Moses's having failed to disseminate the concept of eternal life among his people.” (quoted in: Simon During, Church, State, and Modernization: English Literature as Gentlemanly Knowledge after 1688. Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture, vol. 37, 2008.
print version
return to list
previous document