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thine eye fhall have no pity upon them; neither shalt thou ferve their gods; for that will be a, fnare unto thee. If thou fhalt fay in thine heart, Thefe nations are more than I, how can I difpoffefs them? Thou fhalt not be afraid of them; but fhalt well remember what the Lord thy God did unto Pharaoh, and unto all Egypt: The great temptations which thine eyes faw, and the figns, and the wonders, and the mighty hand, and the stretched-out arm, whereby the Lord thy God brought thee out; fo fhall the Lord thy God do unto all the people of whom thou art afraid. Moreover the Lord thy God will fend the hornet among them, until they that are left, and hide themfelves from thee, be deftroyed. Thou shalt not be affrighted at them for the Lord thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible. And the Lord thy God will put out those nations before thee by little and little: thou mayeft not confume them at once, left the beäfts of the field increase upon thee. But the Lord thy God fhall deliver them unto thee, and fhall deftroy them with a mighty destruction, until they be destroyed. And he shall deliver their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt deftroy their name from under heaven: there fhall no man be able to ftand before thee, until thou have deftroyed them. The graven images of their gods fhall ye burn with fire; thou shalt not defire the filver or gold that is on them, nor take it unto thee, left thou be fnared therein: for it is an abomination to the Lord thy God. Neither fhalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, left thou be a curfed thing like it: but thou fhalt utterly deteft it, and thou fhalt utterly abhor it; for it is a cursed thing. DISCOURSE

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DISCOURSE VII.

Of the miraculous Events from the Time of Joshua to the Babylonish Captivity.

He established a teftimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Ifrael, which he commanded to our fathers, that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who fhould arife, and declare them to their children, that they might fet their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.

PSALM 1xxviii. 5, 6, 7.

6,7.

In the preceding Discourses I laid before

you the evidence of the divine miffion of Mofes, and the credibility of the miraculous events which accompanied the deliverance of the Ifraelites from their bondage in

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Egypt,

Egypt, and their fettlement in the land of Canaan. These miracles were strictly connected with the promulgation of a system of religion effentially different from any that prevailed in the world at that time, and infinitely fuperior to them all; confifting in the worship of the one true God, the maker of heaven and earth, and the fupreme disposer of all events; a religion which admitted into its rites nothing impure or cruel, and which was eminently fubfervient to the practice of moral virtue, It was a religion free from the abfurd, but then univerfally prevalent, arts of divination, magic, and necromancy; but which supplied the people from time to time with real prophets, who announced to them the will of God, and occafionally foretold things

to come.

By this means the Ifraelites were for ever prevented from wholly abandoning their religion, though, deceived by the fame fallacious appearances which led the reft of the world into the worship of a multiplicity of deities, and fascinated by the licentious rites of their religions, the ma

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jority of the nation frequently conformed to the worship of their heathen neighbours. It by no means appears that the nation in general ever difbelieved the miraculous events recorded in the books of Mofes, or the fupreme divinity of the God of their fathers; but they were willing to think that, confiftently with this, they might be indulged in the worfhip of inferior deities, and derive both pleasure and advantage from the rites to which all the great nations around them were addicted. After any general or long continued neglect of their religion, they were, in a course of an extraordinary providence, brought back to it by fevere judgments. But the fame influence which deceived the rest of the world in time affected them as before, till the long captivity in Babylon, and what they had an opportunity of obferving there, effectually cured them of all proneness to idolatry.

Some think these relapses of the Ifraelites into idolatry, after the many miracles to which their ancestors had been witneffes, abfolutely incredible. But it should

be

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be confidered, that this defection to idolatry, to which they had been addicted in Egypt, did not take place till after the death of Joshua and his cotemporaries, that is, while the miraculous events were recent; and that the Ifraelites did not, in general, do more than join the worship of other Gods to that of their own. Alfo, whatever they might have been taught by Mofes, or independently of him, concerning a future state, the proper object of his institutions was temporal profperity; and they faw other nations flourishing notwithstanding their idolatry. They might, therefore, cherish the hope that profperity was not neceffarily connected with the obfervance of their peculiar institutions, especially as their calamity did not follow their defection very speedily, but by flow degrees.

Do not many Chriftians think, and act, much in the fame manner? How many real believers in Chriftianity indulge themfelves in practices which they know to be forbidden by it, either with the secret hope of after repentance, or willing to think that M 4

their

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