SECT. 7-11.] OF THE ORAL LAW. 131
himself, after he came down from the mount; (3.) Constitutions and orders, drawn, by various ways of arguing (thirteen, as Rambam tells us), out of the written law; (4.) The answers and decrees of the san- hedrim and other wise men in former ages; (5.) Immemorial customs, whose original being unknown are supposed to be divine.
9, The whole is divided into six parts, noted with the initial letter of the word which signifies the chief things treated on in it, As the first by t, 2; that is, pyr, “ zeraim,” “seeds;” which is divided into eleven “ massicktot” or treatises, containing all of them seventy-five chapters. The second by », m; thatis, tyv9, “moad,” or “appointed feasts;” which is distributed into twelve “massicktot,” containing in them eighty-eight chapters. The third by 3, that is, nw», “of women;” and is distributed into seven treatises, containing seventy- one chapters. The fourth by 3, that is, op, “nezikim,” about “Joss and damage;” and is divided into eight “ massicktot,” whereof the first is divided into three parts, called sry N23, NOP N23, sn2 sa3, “the first, middle, and last port,” or entrance; containing in them thirty chapters, whereunto forty-four are added in the follow- ing parts. The fifth by p, that is, pw ap, “kodoshim,” of “sanc- tifications;’ and is divided into eleven books, containing ninety chapters. The sixth with p, that is, nnnw, “teharoth,” of “ puri- fications,” in twelve books, and one hundred and twenty-six chapters.
10. Unto the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah they annex the mip‘pin, the “Tosiphot,” or additions of Rabbi Chaiah his scholar, expounding many passages in his master’s works. To them a more full explana- tion of the same doctrine of the Mishnah, which they call Baracetot, is subjoined, being the collection of some anteTalmudical masters. About three hundred years after the destruction of the temple, [A.D. 270,| R. Johanan composed the Jerusalem Talmud, consisting of ex- positions, comments, and disputes, upon the whole Mishnah, except- ing the last part, about purifications. A hundred years or there- abouts after that, [A.D. 420,] Rabbi Ashe composed the Babylonian Talmud, or Gemara. Thirty-two years, they say, he spent in this work, yet leaving it unfinished; seventy-one years after, it was com- pleted by his disciples. And the whole work of both these Talmuds may be referred unto five heads; for,—(1.) They expound the text of the Mishnah; (2.) Decide questions of right and fact; (8.) Report the disputations, traditions, and constitutions of the doctors that lived between them and the writing of the Mishnah; (4) Give allegorical, monstrous, expositions of the Scripture, which they call Midrashoth; and, (5.) Report stories of the like nature.
11. This at length is their oral law grown into; and im the learn- ing and practising of these things consist the whole religion and worship of the Jews, there being not the most absurd saying of any of their doctors in those huge heaps of folly and vanity that they
132 ORAL LAW DISPROVED. [EXERO. VII.
do not equal unto, nay, that they are not ready to prefer before, the written word, that perfect and only guide of their church, whilst God was pleased iit it.
In the dust of this confusion, here they dwell, loving this dark- ness more than light, because their deeds are evil. Having for many generations entertained a prejudicate imagination, that these traditional figments, amongst which their crafty masters have in- serted many filthy and blasphemous fables against our Lord Christ and his Gospel, are of divine authority, and having utterly lost the spiritual sense of the written word, they are by it sealed up in blindness and obdurateness; and shall be so until the veil be taken away, when the appointed time of their deliverance shall come. A brief discovery of the falseness of this fancy of their oral law, which is the foundation of all that huge building of lies and vanities that their Talmuds are composed of, shall put an end to this discourse.
12. (1.) The very story of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai sufficiently discovers the folly of this imagination. This oral law the Jews are ready, on all occasions, to prefer before that which is written; and do openly profess that without it the other is of no use unto them! I desire, then, to know whence it is that all the cir- cumstances of the giving and teaching of the less necessary are so exactly recorded, but not one word is spoken of this oral law, either of God’s revealing of it to Moses, or of Moses’ teaching of it to Joshua or any others. Strange! that so much should be recorded of every circumstance of the less principal, lifeless law, and not one word of either substance or circumstance of that which is, if these men may be believed, the very life and soul of the other. Maimo- nides, in Jad Chazachah, tells us there is mention made of it in Exod. xxiv. 12: “I will give thee,” saith the Lord, “$271 77\n] —a law and commandment.” iA, saith he, is the “ written lav} ” MSD | the “oral:” when the next words are, Nin? ‘MAND WS —« Which I have written, that thou mayest teach them ;” the written law being on several accounts expressed by both those terms, and no other. How know they that any such law was given to Moses as they pre- tend, what testimony, witness, or record of it was had or made at the time of its giving, or in many generations, for two thousand years afterwards?