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[145]
But now, since Apollonius Molo, and Lysimachus, and some others,
write treatises about our lawgiver Moses, and about our laws, which are
neither just nor true, and this partly out of ignorance, but chiefly out
of ill-will to us, while they calumniate Moses as an impostor and deceiver,
and pretend that our laws teach us wickedness, but nothing that is virtuous,
I have a mind to discourse briefly, according to my ability, about our
whole constitution of government, and about the particular branches of
it. For I suppose it will thence become evident, that the laws we have
given us are disposed after the best manner for the advancement of piety,
for mutual communion with one another, for a general love of mankind, as
also for justice, and for sustaining labors with fortitude, and for a contempt
of death. And I beg of those that shall peruse this writing of mine, to
read it without partiality; for it is not my purpose to write an encomium
upon ourselves, but I shall esteem this as a most just apology for us,
and taken from those our laws, according to which we lead our lives, against
the many and the lying objections that have been made against us. Moreover,
since this Apollonius does not do like Apion, and lay a continued accusation
against us, but does it only by starts, and up and clown his discourse,
while he sometimes reproaches us as atheists, and man-haters, and sometimes
hits us in the teeth with our want of courage, and yet sometimes, on the
contrary, accuses us of too great boldness and madness in our conduct;
nay, he says that we are the weakest of all the barbarians, and that this
is the reason why we are the only people who have made no improvements
in human life; now I think I shall have then sufficiently disproved all
these his allegations, when it shall appear that our laws enjoin the very
reverse of what he says, and that we very carefully observe those laws
ourselves. And if I he compelled to make mention of the laws of other nations,
that are contrary to ours, those ought deservedly to thank themselves for
it, who have pretended to depreciate our laws in comparison of their own;
nor will there, I think, be any room after that for them to pretend either
that we have no such laws ourselves, an epitome of which I will present
to the reader, or that we do not, above all men, continue in the observation
of them.
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