seized upon worldly-wise princes and statesmen in former ages, and hereafter may be inflicted upon more. The greatest variety of miracles or wonders in any one age experienced, is scarce sufficient to make up a perfect induction, to persuade superstitious, profane, or wilful spirits of God's absolute power to effect, or of his wisdom to contrive the like in every kind. Most men are prone by nature to make such collections as the servants of the king of Syria did: Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they, &c. 1 Kings xx. 23. The undoubted experiments of the forecited signs, all done in Egypt, might well persuade Pharaoh and his people, that the Lord God of the Hebrews was more skilful in producing wonders, than the gods which the magicians of Egypt served were; that Moses under him had a greater command over the wind and water, over the air and clouds, over the dust of the earth, and over all the host of reasonless creatures, than either the king, the princes, or priests of Egypt could ever procure from their gods, a more sovereign authority over flies, than Beelzebub had. All this being granted, they might notwithstanding thus reason in their hearts-"Who knows whether all this power was given unto Moses, to be exercised only within the meridian or climes of Egypt, or whether his commission might extend over Palestina and Madian ?" The Egyptians at least presumed that the Lord God of the Hebrews had not given Moses such a great command over the armies or hosts of men as the king of Egypt had, because the Israelites (they knew) had no skill in feats of arms, no captains of infantry, no cavalry at all, no weapons or engines of war, offensive especially, amongst them: of all which the Egyptians had abundance-plenty of 21. Upon these or the like presumptions or vain collections, they became foolhardy, and desperately resolute to be avenged upon the children of Israel, for all the miseries, harms, and losses which Moses and Aaron, their chief leaders, had brought upon them: whereas 206 the Lord God of the Hebrews had at this time purposed solemnly to declare to all the world, that vengeance belonged unto him alone, and that he would repay it upon those who had best deserved it; that was upon the Egyptians, who for a long time, by many ways and in divers kinds, had wronged the Israelites, who at no time had wronged them. As for the Egyptians' loss of cattle and of grain, or for their bodily annoyances by frogs, by blains, &c., these were the just awards of God's punitive justice upon Pharaoh and his servants, for part of the wrongs which they and their predecessors had done by bringing them into undeserved bondage. But the Lord God of the Hebrews had not as yet called this present Pharaoh, or the state of Egypt, to an exact reckoning or full account for making away so many infant males of the Hebrews by drowning them in the river, or other like cruel practices against them. Now, that the Egyptians might become the chief executioners of God's vengeance upon themselves for the shedding of innocent blood, he gave them over to their own proud fancies, to their own vain imaginations or presumptions of good success, by pursuing the Israelites, whom they had upon fair terms requested to depart out of their land. And of all the hardenings or infatuations which had possessed the heart of Pharaoh and his council of state, this was the greatest and strangest, that they should adventure to give the Israelites fierce chase, after they saw or might have perceived the Red sea to open her bosom to give the children of Israel passage. All this was the Lord God of the Hebrews his doing, that the blood of the Hebrew infants might be required of the Egyptians κατὰ ἀντιπεπονθὸς, according to the law of retaliation, or most exquisite rule of punitive justice. This present Pharaoh's predecessor, (whether his father or no, I know not,) with the advice of his council of state and war, had designed the poor Hebrew infants as a prey to the fishes or other ravenous water creatures. Now the righteous Lord God of the Hebrews makes this proud Pharaoh's successor, in the height of his strength, and his mighty army and statesmen, a prey, not only to the fishes and sea monsters, but a visible booty to the promiscuous sorts of ravenous creatures which inhabit the wilderness, psalm lxxiv. 14: Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. 22. He that would in vacancy from other businesses diligently peruse the history of Exodus from the first chapter to the twelfth, may find many fair, and unto this day fresh maps of God's patience and longsuffering toward sinners; of his mercy and lovingkindness towards his servants, specially to the oppressed; and many live durable pictures of his justice punitive upon obstinate incorrigible transgressors; but no type or shadow of peremptory absolute reprobation: not one clause is there in all this long relation which looks or can be wrested that way; no, not in the construction or paraphrase which the author of the book of Wisdom makes upon it—a man (I must ever acknowledge) of an excellent contemplative spirit, as full as the moon in points of high speculation of God's general providence in governing the world; and yet a man, when he comes 1 See the ninth book of Comments upon the Apostles' Creed, shall not finally perish. If then we sho or children that Christ died only for shall leave no possible mean between presumption; for if we teach them that only for the elect, they must remain in infidels and unbelievers, until they believ are of the number of the elect. And if we to begin their belief in Christ at this point are of the number of the elect, then both t fall into the very dregs of their heresy whe here saith were foreordained to condemna was the very root of their ungodliness: a reason St. Jude, in the very next verse unt puts the church (to whom he wrote his remembrance of that which had been befo unto them; to wit, that albeit God had d the people out of Egypt, yet afterwards b such as believed not, that is, such as cont their first belief. This then was the sum once delivered unto the saints; that t delivered by Christ's death from the slav and that this deliverance was as truly them by the blood of Christ, as the the Israelites out of Egypt was by the paschal lamb. Yet for all this they sume that they could not or should no seeing God destroyed many in the w he had delivered out of Egypt. Ou we follow his directions, puts us into t way, between the contrary extremes election; and the mean or middle w part of men, which have been bapti the one state nor in the other, but declared in the last foregoing chap |