Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/357

 their own ambition, trampled upon the law of Moses. This is the probable history of the rise of the Sanhedrin; but however that be, it is certain that it is directly opposed to that supreme court appointed by Moses, and that it was love of power which induced the rabbies to sanction it. They thereby depressed the authority of the priests and the civil governor, and in fact became the dictators of the Jewish commonwealth. A tribunal supported from such motives, and so directly subversive of the commands of Moses, cannot prove to any lover of the old religion the authority of the rabbies. Indeed, the approval of such a body would go far to prove that the oral law and the rabbies were Moses's enemies. The Mosaic law was first pulled down before the Sanhedrin could be built up, and it was founded on the ruins of the Mosaic institutions.

We have not space at present to enter into the other passage which the rabbies cite in proof of the authority of the Sanhedrin, but hope to do so in our next number—not that it is necessary to the argument, but simply because it is our earnest wish that the people of Israel should see how the rabbies are in difficulty to find even a semblance of proof for the foundation-stone of their whole fabric. That one passage from Deuteronomy—"Thou shalt come unto the priests, the Levites, and unto the judge," is quite sufficient to prove that Moses did not institute the Sanhedrin but that, on the contrary, it must have been established by some determined enemies of the Mosaic law; and that it was perpetuated by those whose ambition led them to usurp power, which Moses had committed unto others. We have thus another proof that modern Judaism has demolished even the external form of the Mosaic constitution. The rabbies were not content with rejecting the religion of Moses, and casting out the religious teachers whom he had appointed, but have also revolutionized the national polity. Moses ordained a supreme council, consisting of the priests, the Levites, together with the judge, the chief civil governor; but the rabbies have preferred a tribunal established by idolatrous Greeks, because this Greek institution gave the power into their own hands. No wonder that the God of Moses destroyed their city, and put an end to that delusion with which ambitious and wicked men deceived his people Israel.