them, shall be cut off from among their people." The Jews are sometimes called the chosen and favoured people of God, and, in a certain sense, and for some purposes, they were so; yet is this very people, both in this place, and in other places, over and over again reminded, that if they followed the same practices, they must expect the same fate. "Ye shall not walk in the way of the nations which I cast out before you: for they committed all those things, and therefore I abhorred them; as the nations which the Lord destroyed before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye were not obedient unto the voice of the Lord your God."

What farther proves, not only the justice, but the clemency of God, his long-suffering, and that it was the incorrigible wickedness of those nations, which at last drew down upon them their destruction, is, that he suspended, as we may so say, the stroke, till their wickedness was come to such a pitch, that they were no longer to be endured. In the 15th chapter

chapter of Genesis God tells Abraham, that his descendants of the fourth generation should return into that country, and not before: "for the iniquity, saith he, of the Amorites is not yet full." It should seem from hence that so long as their crimes were confined within any bounds, they were permitted to remain in their country. We conclude therefore, and we are well warranted in concluding, that the Canaanites were destroyed on account of their wickedness. And that wickedness was perhaps aggravated by their having had amongst them Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; examples of a purer religion and a better conduct, still more by the judgments of God so remarkably set before them in the history of Abraham's family; particularly by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; at least these things prove that they were not without warning, and that God did not leave himself without witness among them.

Now when God, for the wickedness of a people, sends an earthquake, or a fire, or a plague

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plague amongst them, there is no complaint of injustice, especially when the calamity is known, or expressly declared before hand, to be inflicted for the wickedness of such people. It is rather regarded as an act of exemplary penal justice, and, as such, consistent with the character of the moral Governor of the universe. The objection, therefore, is not to the Canaanitish nations being destroyed: (for when their national wickedness is considered, and when that is expressly stated; as the cause of their destruction, the dispensation, however severe, will not be questioned ;) but the objection is, solely to the manner of destroying them.I mean there is nothing but the manner left to be objected to: their wickedness accounts for the thing itself. To which objection it may be replied, that if the thing itself be just, the manner is of little signification: of little signification even to the sufferers themselves. For where is the great difference, even to them, whether they were destroyed by an earthquake, a pestilence, a famine, or by the hands of an enemy? Where is the difference, even

to

to our imperfect apprehensions of divine justice, provided it be, and is known to be, for their wickedness that they are destroyed?But this destruction, you say, confounded the innocent with the guilty. The sword of Joshua, and of the Jews, spared neither women nor children, Is it not the same with all other national visitations? Would not an earthquake, or a fire, or a plague, or a famine amongst them have done the same? Even in an ordinary and natural death the same thing happens. God takes away the life he lends, without regard, that we can perceive, to age, or sex, or character. But, after all, promiscuous massacres, the burning of cities, the laying waste of countries, are things dreadful to reflect upon. Who doubts it? so are all the judgments of Almighty God. The effect, in whatever way it shews itself,

rily be tremendous, when the

must necessa

Lord, as the

Psalmist expresses it, "moveth out of his place to punish the wicked." But it ought to satisfy us at least this is the point, upon which we ought to rest and fix our attention; that it was 3 L2

for

for excessive, wilful, and forewarned wickedness, that all this befel them, and that it is expressly so declared in the history, which recites it.

But further, if punishing them by the hands of the Israelites rather than by a pestilence, an earthquake, a fire, or any such calamity, be still an objection, we may perceive, I think, some reasons for this method of punishment in preference to any other whatever; always, however, bearing in our mind, that the question is not concerning the justice of the punishment, but the mode of it. It is well known, that the people of those ages were affected by no proof of the power of the gods, which they worskipped, so deeply, as by their giving them victory in war. It was by this species of evidence, that the superiority of their own god above the gods of the nations, which they conquered, was in their opinion evinced. This being the actual persuasion, which then prevailed in the world, no matter whether well or ill founded, how were the neighbouring na