If therefore the _Israelites_ under _Moses_, were by him directed to consider themselves merely as creatures of this world, having nothing to enjoy, or hope for, but the good things of this life, it must be said he did all that well could be done, to make them an _earthly_, _covetous_, _rapacious_, _stiff-necked_ and _brutal_ people. And all the complaints which the prophets have brought against them, on that account, ought to have been made only against _Moses_ himself, and the religion that was set up by him. For a religion only offering, and wholly confining people to earthly enjoyments, may surely be said, not only to make, but even require them to be wholly sensual and earthly minded. And every hearty believer of such a religion, is by his very faith called upon, to make the most that he can, of the _lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life_. * _Moses_ saith, “Hear, _O Israel_, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.” Now these _Israelites_ looking backwards to God’s covenant of redemption, made with their forefathers, of which they were the undoubted heirs; and forwards to this new covenant of a new theocracy, added, as God’s peculiar mercy to them in this life, to keep them to himself, to support them under their afflictions, and to arm them with patience in waiting for that eternal redemption, in the faith of which, their ancestors had died so full of joy and comfort: in this double view of their state under God, which _Moses_ had so fully set before _them_, and with the strongest injunctions to be daily teaching them to their children, they had the highest reason to rejoice in God, and to love him with all their heart and soul and strength. But to suppose that _Moses_, designedly secreting from them, the knowledge of that eternal relation they had to God, on which the hopes of their forefathers were founded, and on which he himself was made able to chuse the afflictions of Christ, has something very shocking in it. For if _Moses_ was so good a man, because he had faith in the eternal redemption promised from the beginning, can there be more cruelty, than in supposing him, designing by his religious system, wholly to obliterate all thought and remembrance of God’s unchangeable covenant of life, and extinguish all sense and hope of a redemption to come? To what purpose is it to say to such a people, shut up in earthly hopes, “Thou shalt love the one God of heaven with all thy heart?” For if he had succeeded in his design, fixed them in the belief, that they had no treasure but in this world, we have Christ’s word for it, that the affections of their hearts could go no where else, saying, as an eternal truth, _that where our treasure is, there must be the heart also_. So that in this case, no love of God, and therefore no other divine virtue, could have any place in those who conformed to the design of _Moses_.