many reasons for avoiding it; Moses, I say, after having forbidden all these excesses to the Israelites, positively declares that the Canaanites were guilty of them all: that the earth was weary of such execrable monsters; and that for these crimes God had sent the Israelites to destroy them, chap. xviii. 24, 25. Defile not yourselves, says he in the book of Leviticus (after an enumeration of the most shameful vices that can be imagined) Defile not yourselves in any of these things, for in all these, the nations are defiled which I cast out before you. Therefore I do visit the ini quity thereof, and the land itself comiteth out her inhabitants. And again in the 12th chapter of Deuteronomy, ver. 30. Take heed to thyself, that thou be not snared by following them after that they be destroyed from before thee, and that thou inquire not.... saying, How did these nations even so will I do likewise. Such were the iniquities which God forbore to punish for many ages, and at last punished with a severity, in appearance, contrary to his equity; but there is nothing astonishing in it to those who consult the fore-mentioned maxim, that is, that it is equitable in God to proportion the punishments of guilty nations to the time granted for their repentance. We observe lastly, that though God in his infinite mercy had determined to bear four hundred years longer with nations, unworthy of his patience, there was one sin excepted from this general goodness-there was one of their iniquities that drew down the most formidable preternatural punishments upon those who committed it, and forced divine justice to anticipate, by a swift vengeance, a punishment, which in other cases, was deferred for four whole ages. St. Paul paints this iniquity in the most odious colours in the first of Romans, and it was constantly punished with death by the Jews. Read with a holy fear the nineteenth chapter of Genesis. The inhabitants of the cities of the plain were possessed with a more than brutal madness. Two angels in human forms are sent to deliver Lot from the judgments which are about to destroy them. The amiable borrowed forms of these intelligences strike the eyes of the inhabitants of Sodom, and excite their abominable propensities to sin. A crowd of people, young and old, instantly surround the house of Lot, in order to seize the celestial messengers, and to offer violence to them, and though they are stricken blind they persist in feeling for doors which they cannot see. Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim, being inhabited by ii. 8. by none but people of this abominable kind, are all given up to the vengeance due to their crimes. The Lord raineth fire and brimstone from the Lord, Gen. xix. 24. The brimstone enkindled, penetrates so far into the veins of bitumen, and other inflammable bodies, of which the ground is full, that it forms a lake, denominated in scripture the Dead Sea and, to use the words of an apocryphal writer, the waste land that smoketh, and plants bearing fruit that' never come to ripeness, are even to this day a testimony of the wickedness of the five cities, Wisdom x. 7. In vain had Lot vered his righteous soul from day to day, 2 Pet. In vain had Abraham availed himself of all the interest that piety gave him in the compassion of a merciful God; in vain had the abundance of his fervent benevolence said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, who am but dust and ashes: Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city; peradventure forty; peradventure twenty; peradventure ten, Gen. xviii. 23, 27, &c. The decree of divine vengeance must be executed. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings; be insructed, ye judges of the earth, Psal. ii. 10. God grant you may never know any thing more of these terrible executions than what you learn from the history just now related! I return to my subject, except to that part of it last mentioned, the sin of the cities of the plain. The iniquities of the Canaanites were suffered for more than four hundred years; so long would God defer the destruction of the Amorites by Israel, because till then their iniquity would not have attained its height. And why would he defer the destruction of these miserable people till their iniquities should have attained their height? This, as we said in the beginning, is the subject upon which we are going to fix your attention. God exercised his patience long toward the most wicked people, having borne with the rebellion of ancestors, he bears with the rebellion of their posterity, and whole ages pass without visible punishment: but at length, collecting the rebellions of parents and children into one point of vengeance, he poureth out his indignation on whole nations that have abused his patience; and, as I advanced before, and think it necessary to repeat again, he proportioneth his vindictive visitations to the length of time that had been granted to avert them. I will judge that nation whom thy descendants shall serve, but it shall be in the fourth generation, because because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. The remaining time, with which you condescend yet to favour me, I shall employ in considering, I. The nature of this œconomy. II. The goodness and justice which characterize it. IV. The relation which it bears to our own dismal circumstances. Let us consider, I. The nature of this economy. Recollect an observation that hath been made by most of those who have laid down rules to assist us in reasoning justly; that is, that we are sometimes to consider a nation, in a moral light, as a person, consisting of a body, a soul, and a duration of life. All the people who compose this nation are considered as one body: the maxims which direct its conduct in peace or in war, in commerce or in religion, constitute what we call the spirit, or soul of this body. The ages of its continuance are considered as the duration of its life. This parallel might be easily enlarged. Upon this principle, we attribute to those who compose a nation now, what, properly speaking, agrees only with those who formerly composed it. Thus we say, the same nation was delivered from bondage in Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh, which was delivered from slavery in Babylon in the reign of Cyrus. In the same sense, Jesus Christ tells the Jews of his time, Moses gave you not that bread from heaven, John vi. 32; not that the same persons, who had been delivered from Egypt, were delivered from Babylon; nor that the Jews, to whom Moses had given manna in the desert, were the same to whom Jesus Christ gave bread from heaven; but because the Jews, who lived under the reign of Cyrus, and those who lived in the time of Pharaoh, they who lived in the time of Moses, and they who lived in the time of Jesus Christ, were considered as different parts of that moral body, called the Jewish nation. On this principle, (and this has a direct view to our subject) we attribute to this whole body, not only those physical, but even those moral actions, which belong only to one part of it. We ascribe the praise, or the blame of an action to a nation, though they who performed it have been dead many ages. We say that the Romans, who had courage to oppose even the shadow of tyranny under their con suls, suls, had the meanness to adore tyrants under their emperors. And, what is still more remarkable, we consider that part of a nation which continues, responsible for the crimes of that which subsists no more. A passage in the gospel of St. Luke will clearly illustrate our meaning. Woe unto you: for ye build the sepulchres of the prophets, and your fathers killed them, chap. xi. 47; and ye say, If twe had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Truly ye bear witness, that ye allow the deeds of your fathers: for they indeed killed them, and ye build their sepulchres. Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute; that the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; from the blood of Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation, Matt. xxiii. 30. We will not inquire now what Zachariahs is here spoken of. Interpreters-are not agreed. Some say, it is the same person who is spoken of in the second book of Chronicles, chap. xxiv. 20, 21. who was extraordinarily raised up to stem that torrent of corruption, with which the Jews were carried away after the death of the high priest Jehoida. He ̇succeeded his father Jehoida in his zeal, and fell a victim for it, for he was stoned to death in the porch of the temple, by those whom he endeavoured to reform. Others say, it is a Zacharias, mentioned by the historian Josephus*, whose virtue rendered him formidable to those madmen, who are known by the name of zealots; they charged him unjustly with the most shocking crimes, and put him to death as if he had actually committed them. A third opinion is, that it is he, whom we call one of the lesser prophets. But, not to detain you on this subject, which perhaps may not be easily determined, we may observe in our Saviour's words the manner of considering a nation as a moral person, who is responsible at one time for crimes committed at another, who hath been borne with, but hath abused that forbearance, and, at length, is punished both for committing the crimes, and for abusing the forbearance that had been granted. Verily VOL. I. Ff * Bell. Jud. iv. 19. I say I say unto you, upon you shall come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of the righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. The Amorites in my text must be considered, in like manner, as a moral person, whose life God had resolved, when he spoke to Abraham, to prolong four hundred years; who, during that four hundred years, would abuse his patience; and at last would be punished for all the crimes, which should be committed in that long period. And that nation whom they shall serve will I judge. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. This is the nature of this economy of Providence. We shall see, in a second article, the perfections of God which shine in it, and, in particular, that goodness, and that justice, which eminently characterize all his actions. II. It is extremely easy to distinguish the goodness of this œconomy, and, as we are under a necessity of abridging our subject, we may safely leave this article to your own meditation. To exercise patience four hundred years toward a people, who worshipped the most infamous creatures; a people who sacrificed human victims; a people abandoned to the most enormous crimes; to defer the extinction of such a people for four hundred years could only proceed from the goodness of that God, who is long-suffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, 2 Pet. iii. 9. It is more difficult to discover the justice of God in this œconomy. What! The Jews, who lived in the time of Jesus Christ, could they be justly punished for murders committed so many ages before their birth? What! Could they be responsible for the blood of the prophets, in which their hands had never been imbrued? What! Could God demand an account of all this blood of them? How! The Canaanites of Joshua's time, ought they to be punished for all the abominations of four hundred years? What! Ought we to terrify you to day, not only with your own sins, but with all those who have been committed in your provinces from the moment of their first settlement? I answer, If that part of a nation which subsists in one period hath no union of time with that which subsisted in another period, it may have an union of another kind, it may have |