Of Exodus.

16.  In Exodus, you read of a series of wonders, wrought by the Almighty to rescue the oppressed Israelites from the cruel tyranny of the Egyptians, who having first received them as guests, by degrees reduced them to a state of slavery.  By the most peculiar mercies and exertion in their favour, God prepared his chosen people to receive, with reverent and obedient hearts, the solemn restitution of those primitive laws, which probably he had revealed to Adam and his immediate descendants; or which, at least, he had made known by the dictates of conscience, but which time, and the degeneracy of mankind, had much obscured.

17.  This important revelation was made to them in the wilderness of Sinai; there, assembled before the burning mountain, surrounded with “blackness, and darkness, and tempest,” they heard the awful voice of God pronounce the eternal law, impressing it on their hearts with circumstances of terror, but without those encouragements and those excellent promises, which were afterwards offered to mankind by Jesus Christ.  Thus were the great laws of morality restored to the Jews, and through them transmitted to other nations; and by that means a great restraint was opposed to the torrent of vice and impiety which began to prevail over the world.

18.  To these moral precepts; which are of perpetual and universal obligation, were superadded, by the ministration of Moses, many peculiar institutions, wisely adapted to different ends—­either to fix the memory of those past deliverances, which were figurative of a future and far greater salvation—­to place inviolable barriers between the Jews and the idolatrous nations, by whom they were surrounded—­or, to be the civil law by which the community was to be governed.

19.  To conduct this series of events, and to establish these laws with his people, God raised up that great prophet Moses, whose faith and piety enabled him to undertake and execute the most arduous enterprizes, and to pursue, with unabated zeal, the welfare of his countrymen; even in the hour of death, this generous ardour still prevailed; his last moments were employed in fervent prayers for their prosperity, and, in rapturous gratitude, for the glimpse vouchsafed him of a Saviour, far greater than himself, whom God would one day raise up to his people.

20.  Thus did Moses, by the excellency of his faith, obtain a glorious pre-eminence among the saints and prophets in heaven; while on earth he will be for ever revered as the first of those benefactors to mankind, whose labours for the public good have endeared their memory to all ages.

Of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

21.  The next book is Leviticus, which contains little besides the laws for the peculiar ritual observance of the Jews, and therefore affords no great instruction to us now; you may pass it over entirely; and for the same reason you may omit the first eight chapters of Numbers.  The rest of Numbers is chiefly a continuation of the history, with some ritual laws.