And as to the rest of the world, no particular message or messenger, tho’ new risen from the dead, proclaims to them in so powerful a manner, the vanity of their idols, the knowledge of the one true God of all the world, as this remarkable body of people set up in the midst of the world did. So that the law, tho’ nothing but a temporal covenant of _outward care and protection_, was not only most divinely contrived to preserve the faith of the first holy patriarchs, and guide them to the time and manner of receiving the promises made to their fathers, but it was all mercy to the rest of the world, being no less than one continual, daily, miraculous call to them to receive blessing and protection, life and salvation in the knowledge and worship of the one true God of heaven and earth. Now when the children of the patriarchs, were to be entered into this new covenant, the utmost care was taken by the Spirit of God, that to eyes that could see and ears that could hear, enough should be shewn and said, to prevent all _carnal atheism_ to temporal and outward things, and bring forth a spiritual _Israel_, full of that faith and piety, in which their holy ancestors, as pilgrims on earth, had lived and died devoted to God, in hope of everlasting redemption. To this end _Moses_, tho’ bringing them under a ritual of bodily washings and purifications, yet that they might use them only as outward confessions and memorials of an inward spiritual pollution, and as types and figures of their being to be delivered from it; is led by the inspiration of God, not only to insert in the books of the law, the most sublime doctrines and heavenly precepts of patriarchal holiness, but to lay before them, for their daily instruction, a history of the most deep and affecting truths: truths that had every thing in them fitted to awaken and keep up that strong hope of an eternal redemption, under the power of which, the holy patriarchs had overlooked every thing in time for the sake of eternity. I mean, the most wonderful history of the creation and curse of this world, of the high origin of man and his dreadful fall from it, his redemption and covenant of life restored in a seed of the woman, the lives and deaths of the holy patriarchs, their patience under all sufferings, their contempt of worldly advantages, their heavenly visions, revelations and speeches from the invisible God, keeping them thereby in an holy intercourse with the _invisible world_, full of faith and hope of the good things of eternity. To mention one or two of those great doctrines of _Moses_, which set forth the original perfection and heavenly nature of man.