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wildered in their plans, their schemes are dictated by the exigencies of the moment but he is making them the instruments of fulfilling his pleasure. They wish to shake the power of this and that empire, to check the insolent rapacity of an unprincipled tyrant, to extend their own political interests, or to add such a track of country, and such a distant possession, to their own dominion. They form alliances, and project enterprises: he sanctions, or crushes, these, as he sees fit-still pursuing his own eternal purposes.

It is pleasant to see the gradual developement of his plans, and the regular succession of events, which accomplish them. He is "a God "of order, and not of confusion." Nothing is premature, nothing is retarded, nothing is out of place. All is concord, co-operation, utility, beauty, stability.

It will be pleasant hereafter to see the accomplishment of the whole scheme. So transient is our present existence, that a very small portion of the divine plans can fall within it's narrow compass. In a few instances, like the present, the records of truth enable us to form some conception of the operations of God, and the history is a counterpart of the prediction. But when we shall have subdued our enemies, and completed our wanderings in the wilderness :

when we shall have passed Jordan, and taken possession of our heavenly Canaan: we shall compare the prediction, the event, and it's consequences together: and with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, raise the shout of triumph in the kingdom of God!

NOTES.

His

NOTE 1.-Grotius has distinctly enumerated the testimonies from ancient writers, which we mentioned generally: to which he has added others which we did not produce. He says, respecting the Orphic verses, "the great Scaliger has mended the passage, by "changing a letter; and instead of reading the word iλoyens, as "Eusebius, in his Præp. Evan. lib. xiii. cap. 12. quotes it from "Aristobulus, he bids us read it idoyerns”—born of the water. quotation from Strabo is not inserted here, because, while his testimony to the great character of Moses is decisive, he has mingled the fable of tradition so entirely with his evidence, that the passage would not be worthy the room it would occupy in this note. It is in his xvi. book. There is a remarkable testimony in Diodorus Siculus, in the first book of his history, comprised in a single sentence. He had been speaking of those who assert that the Gods were the authors of their laws—and adds, παρὰ Ιεδαίοις δὲ Μωσῆν Tòv 'Iáw iπınaλúperov Osór—As Moses, who, among the Jews, called God, 'law (Iao). Grotius quotes this passage also, and says, that by 'Iáo (Iao) n' (Jehovah) is intended; and that the name was so pronounced," by the oracles, in the Orphic verses, by the Basilidian "heretics, and other Gnostics:" also, with little variation, "by the "Tyrians." These quotations, with his important remarks, are to be found in his Truth of the Christian Religion: book i. sect. 16. notes 83-101.

NOTE 2.-Testimony of Josephus, to the early settlement of the Jews in Canaan. Ταῦτα μετά ὁ Μανεθών· δῆλον δὲ ἐστιν ἐκ τῶν εἰρη μένων ἐτῶν τω χρόνω συλλογισθέντος, ὅτι οἱ καλέμενοι ποιμένες, ἡμέτεροι δὲ πρόγονοι, τρισὶ και εν' ενήκοντα και τριακοσίοις πρόσθεν ἔτεσιν, ἐκ τῆς

Αἰγύπλε ἀπαλλαγέντες, τὴν χώραν ταύτην απώκησαν, ή Δαναὸν εἰς Αργος αφικέσθαι και τοι τῦτον ἀρχαιότατον Αργείοι νομίζεσι Thus far Manetho. Therefore estimating the time from the beginning of those years, (alluding to some foregoing calculations according to Manetho's history) it will appear, that our ancestors, whom they call shepherds, migrated from Egypt, and inhabited this country, 393 years before Danaus came to Argos, which is nevertheless celebrated by the Greeks for antiquity. Josephus adds, "that two things are evident "from Manetho's account: first, that the Jews came from another "place to Egypt: secondly, that they left them again, and that nearly thousand years before the Trojan war." Lowth says, that this calculation is double the true distance of time between these events. However, the establishment of the Jews in Canaan, is much earlier than any Grecian writer, or history. See Josephus, contra Appion, Tom. II. lib. i. p. 1339. Hudsoni edit.

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MONARCHY, TO THE BUILDING OF SOLOMON'S TEMPLE: WITH A CONFIRMATION OF SOME SUBORDINATE FACTS.

1 SAM. viii. 6-10 & 19, 20.

But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, give us a King to judge us: and Samuel prayed unto the Lord; And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods; so do they also unto thee. Now therefore

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