Moses, the celebrated prophet and legislator of the Israelites, ingratiated himself into their esteem, by the stratagem of prayer, and pretended intimacy with God; he acquaints us, that he was once admitted to a sight of his back-parts! and that "_no man can see" his "face and live_;" and at other times we are told that he "_talked with God, face to face, as a man talketh with his friend_;" and also that at times God waxed, wroth with Israel, and how Moses prayed for them; and at other times, that he ordered Aaron to offer sweet incense to God, which _appeased his wrath_, and prevented his destroying Israel in his _hot displeasure!_ These are the footsteps, by which we may trace sacerdotal dominion to its source, and explore its progress in the world. "_And the Lord said unto Moses, how long will this people provoke me? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and I will make of thee a great nation, and mightier than they_," but Moses advertises God of the injury, which so rash a procedure would do to his character among the nations; and also reminds him of his promise to Israel, saying, "_Now if thou shall kill all this people as one man, then the nations, which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land, which he swear unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness_." That Moses should thus advise the omniscient God, of dishonorable consequences which would attend a breach of promise, which he tells us, that God was unadvisedly about to make with the tribes of Israel, had not his remonstrance prevented it, is very extraordinary and repugnant to reason; yet to an eye of faith it would exalt the man Moses, "and make him very great;" for if we may credit his history of the matter, he not only averted God's judgment against Israel, and prevented them from being cut off as a nation, but by the same prayer procured for them a pardon of their sin. "_Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people_," and in the next verse follows the answer, "_and the Lord said I have pardoned according to thy word_." It seems that God had the power, but Moses had the dictation of it, and saved Israel from the wrath and pestilential fury of a jealous God; and that he procured them a pardon of their sin, "_for the Lord thy God is a jealous God_." Jealousy can have no existence in that mind, which possesses perfect knowledge, and consequently cannot, without the greatest impropriety, he ascribed to God, who knows all things, and needed none of the admonitions, advice or intelligence of Moses, or any of his dictatorial prayers. "_And the Lard hearkened unto me at that time also_;" intimating that it was a common thing for him to do the like. When teachers can once make the people believe that God answers their prayers, and that their eternal interest is dependent on them, they soon raise themselves to opulency, rule and high sounding titles; as that