and were destined to flavery from the days of Noah.

We fee the purport and meaning of the prophecy, and now let us attend to the completion of it. Curfed be Canaan; and the Canaanites appear to have been an abominably wicked people. The fin and punishment of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities of the plain are too well known to be particularly specified: and for the other inhabitants of the land, which was promifed to Abraham and his feed, God bore with them till their iniquity was full. (Gen. XV. 16.) They were not only addicted to idolatry, which was then the case of the greater part of the world, but were guilty of the worst fort of idolatry; for every abomination to the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their fons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods. (Deut. XII. 31.) Their religion was bad, and their morality (if poffible) was worse; for corrupt religion and corrupt morals usually generate each other. Read the 18th and the 20th chapters of Leviticus, and you will find that unlawful marriages and unlawful lufts, witchcraft, adultery, inceft, fodomy, beastiality, and the like monftrous enormities were frequent and common among them. And was not a curse

in

in the nature of things, as well as in the juft judgment of God, defervedly intailed upon fuch a people and nation as this? It was not for their own righteousness that the Lord brought the Ifraelites in to poffefs the land: but for the wickedness of thefe nations did the Lord drive them out: (Deut. IX. 4.) and he would have driven out the Ifraelites in like manner for the very fame abominations. (Levit. XVIII. 24, &c.) Defile not you yourselves in any of these things; for in all these the nations are defiled which I caft out before you: And the land is defiled; therefore I do vifit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my Statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations-That the land pue not you out also when ye defile it, as it fpued out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of thefe abominations, even the fouls that commit them, fhall be cut off from among their people.

But the curfe particularly implies fervitude and fubjection. Curfed be Canaan; a fervant of fervants fhall be be unto his brethren. It is very well known that the word brethren in Hebrew comprehends more diftant relations. The defcendents therefore of Canaan were to be fubject to the defcendents of both Shem and VOL. I. Japheth:

C

Japheth: and the natural confequence of vice, in communities as well as in fingle persons, is flavery. The fame thing is repeated again and again in the two following verfes, and Canaan fhall be fervant to them, or their fervant; so that this is as it were the burden of the prophecy. Some (5) critics take the phrafe of fervant of fervants ftrictly and litterally, and say that the prediction was exactly fulfilled, when the Canaanites became fervants to the Ifraelites, who had been fervants to the Egyptians. But this is refining too much; the phrase of (6) fervant of fervants is of the same turn and cast as holy of bolies, king of kings, fong of fongs, and the like expreffions in fcripture; and imports that they fhould be the lowest and baseft of fervants.

We cannot be certain as to the time of the delivery of this prophecy; for the history of Mofes is fo concife, that it hath not gratified us in this particular. If the prophecy was delivered foon after the tranfactions, which immediately precede in the hiftory, Noah's beginning to be a bufbandman, and planting a vineyard, it was foon after the deluge, and then Canaan

(5) Noa Chamum execratus prædixerat fore ut ejus pofteri fervi effent fervorum: atque id impletum in Chananæis, tum cum fubire coacti funt Ifraeli.

was

tarum jugum qui Ægyptiis diu fervierant. Bocharti Phaleg. Lib. 1. Cap. 1. Col. 3, 4.

(6) S. Pompeius, ftudiis rudis, libertorum fuorum libertus, fervorumque

was prophefied of before he was born, as it was prophefied of Efau and Jacob (Gen. XXV. 23.) the elder fall ferve the younger, before the children were born and had done either good or evil, as St. Paul faith. (Rom. IX. 11.) If the prophecy was delivered a little before the tranfactions, which immediately follow in the history, it was a little before Noah's death, and he was inlightened in his last moments as Jacob was, to foretel what should befall his posterity in the latter days. (Gen. XLIX. 1.) However this matter be determined, it was feveral centuries after the delivery of this prophecy, when the Ifraelites, who were defcendents of Shem, under the command of Joshua invaded the Canaanites, fmote above thirty of their kings, took poffeffion of their land, flew feveral of the inhabitants, made the Gibeonites and others fervants and tributaries, and Solomon afterwards fubdued the rest. (2 Chron. VIII. 7, 8, 9.) As for all the people that were left of the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebufites, which were not of Ifrael; but of their children who were left after them in the

fervorumque fervus; fpeciofis invidens ut pareret humillimis. Velleius Paterc. II. 73. Hic vero valet poftremus fervorum. Vid. Salluft. Fragm. Id. Velle

Cz

land,

ius II. 83. Infra fervos cliens.

From fome M. S. notes of Mr. Waffe's in the hands of Dr. Jortin.

(7) Mede's

land, whom the children of Ifrael confumed not; them did Solomon make to pay tribute until this day. But of the children of Ifrael did Solomon make no fervants for his work: but they were men of war, and chief of his captains, and captains of his chariots and borfemen. The Greeks and

Romans too, who were defcendents of Japheth, not only fubdued Syria and Palestine, but also pursued and conquered fuch of the Canaanites as were any where remaining, as for inftance the Tyrians and Carthaginians, the former of whom were ruined by Alexander and the Grecians, and the latter by Scipio and the Romans. "This fate," fays (7) Mr. Mede, was it that made Hannibal, a child of Canaan, cry out with the amazement of his "foul Agnofco fortunam Carthaginis, I acknow

'

lege the fortune of Carthage." And ever fince the miferable remainder of this people have been flaves to a foreign yoke, first to the Saracens, who defcended from Shem, and afterwards to the Turks, who defcended from