state: we perpetually find him, if pressed with refractory passages from the prophetic writings, entirely changing his tone, and declaring that no text brought from a composition subsequent to the time of David can be allowed to invalidate his grand position, because after that era the doctrine was gradually opened by the prophets to the people'. If then the doctrine was confessedly taught in the prophetic writings, and if from them the knowledge of it was confessedly opened to the people at large; Ezra, we may be sure, could not have been ignorant of it. But, if both he and the people knew it, he would certainly never have conducted the argument in the book of Job after the manner supposed by the bishop: According to his lordship, the difficulty under discussion is, why the wicked are often prosperous and the good often afflicted in this world and the solution offered by Ezra is, that God chooses it should be so. Now who can refrain from seeing with half a glance, that, if Ezra were the author of the poem and if its subject were the above mentioned difficulty, he must assuredly have given a totally different solution; namely, a future retributory state when all present irregularities would be set right. For the bishop himself confesses, that that doctrine was known to the Jews subsequent to the time of David, having been gradu

'Div. Leg. book vi. sect. 1. p. 296. sect. 5.

P. 1.

ally opened by the prophets to the people. Yet it must be confessed, that, in the oration of God, where doubtless on the bishop's plan of exposition we ought to seek the doctrine of a future state, nothing of the sort occurs. Hence, on his own acknowledgment that the doctrine was known to the Jews in the time of Ezra, I conclude, that the drift of the poem cannot be what he has supposed it to be: because, if it were, this well known doctrine must have occurred where the whole plan of the poem required it to occur, namely in the concluding oration which the author puts into the mouth of God.

(2.) The bishop's opinion however is not only inconsistent with his own acknowledgments, but likewise with the internal structure of the poem itself.

He tells us, that the whole dispute between Job and his friends relates to the cessation of that equal or extraordinary providence, which had oharasthracterized the Hebrew Theocracy down to the

time of the Babylonian captivity: that the matter agitated in this dispute is, whether temporal prosperity and temporal adversity be, or be not, the infallible signs of a man's piety or impiety: that Job, maintaining the negative, argues throughout, that wicked men often enjoy great prosperity and that good men are often afflicted from the very beginning to the very end of their lives: and that his friends, maintaining the affirmative, argue through

8

out, that wicked men never enjoy such permanent prosperity and that good men are never harassed with such permanent affliction.

This, according to the bishop, is the constant tenor of the arguments, which are severally advanced by the disputants: but, in making the assertion, his lordship is by no means accurate.

The disputants, in fact, so far from keeping to what the bishop deems their respective points, occasionally change sides; and thence argue, as they could not have argued, if the theory which he advocates had been well founded.

t

Thus, even at the very beginning of the dispute, Eliphaz, who ought to have maintained the affirmative of the question, takes up the negative: for he uses language wholly inconsistent in the mouth of one, who (if we may credit the bishop) was zealously vindicating the alleged fact of an equal providence. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. Now the expression of this sentiment would have been perfectly in point on the part of Job: but, on the part of Eliphaz, it is neither more nor less than a complete giving up of the matter, which (according to Bishop Warburton) he had undertaken to defend. For the supposed litigated question is, whether severe affliction, like that of Job, be not a proof that the afflicted person is a wicked man: and

1 Job v. 17.

this question Eliphaz is thought to maintain in the affirmative. Yet does he at once allow, in plain contradiction to his imagined purpose of demonstrating a man's wickedness from the fact of his affliction, that HAPPY is the man whom God correcteth, and that the benevolent chastening of the Almighty ought not to be despised by the good: when all the while he stood pledged to maintain, that no good man could be thus afflicted, simply because he was a good man.

As Eliphaz slides from the affirmative into the negative, so does Job slide from the negative into the affirmative; the supposed disputants upon the question of an equal providence thus completely changing sides. The friends of Job are thought by the bishop to maintain, that a bad man, as a bad man, cannot be prosperous. Now Job, instead of controverting this position, which he stood pledged to do as arguing on the side of an unequal providence, fairly acknowledges the truth of it. The wicked, says he in more than a single place, may seem to prosper for a season: but the vengeance of God is sure at length to overtake them; and then they are cast down from the height of prosperity to the depth of trouble and adversity'. Does this however always take place under an unequal providence or would any person thus argue, who was maintaining the position, which the bishop supposes Job to maintain? Assuredly

1 Job xxi, xxiv. xxvii. 13–23.

not: we know full well, that, under an unequal providence, many wicked and irreligious men enjoy uninterrupted prosperity, and go down to the grave without ever experiencing the least reverse; while, on the contrary, many good and pious men are subjected all their days to great temporal affliction, and die at length after having encountered through their whole life an unbroken succession of disheartening troubles. Hence no person, who was professedly maintaining the point which the bishop supposes Job to maintain, would ever think of solving the difficulty by saying, that, although the good may for a time be afflicted and although the bad may for a time be prosperous, yet, if we have but a little patience, we shall be sure even in THIS world to see their conditions exactly reversed. However a man might loosely express himself in common conversation, he would never venture to argue gravely in such a manner as this: for it is plain, that an argument of this description can only rest upon the identical basis which Bishop Warburton supposes Job to be controverting; namely the existence of an equal providence, under which the good are always rewarded and the bad always punished in THIS PRESENT world. Job therefore maintains the very position, which, (according to the bishop) he ought to deny and Eliphaz, by way of being even with him, denies the very position, which (according to the bishop) he ought to maintain.