to mankind; and yet in many respects very blameable. When the Almighty favours and upholds such characters, for the good which he means to those to whom they minister, that extension of temporal blessings to them is not to be construed into a full acceptance of their persons; it has no reference to the judgment which is to follow, but relates only to the dispensations of this life. It is no more than the toleration in many cases of entirely wicked and violent men, when they are fulfilling some secret purpose of his, either of justice or mercy. For it is not the manner of Divine Providence to cut men short the moment they begin to sin, but to give them an opportunity to develope their character and accomplish their purposes. To what close can this scene of probation be brought, if every effort of evil is nipped in the bud, or every one in whom any tendency to good appears, be removed from farther annoyance before the proper effects of each have been produced? If a general judgment is to be the consummation of all things, there must be facts which are the proper subjects of judgment, or else it will appear to the inferior reasonable beings, who are spectators, rather ideal than real and for these facts to appear, there must be that forbearance and long suffering, which Scripture and experience both assure us there

is in God's treatment of his reasonable creatures. The inference which the wise King of Israel notes; "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil 10," is not more perverse in conduct, than it is in argument to urge any objections from this source against the credibility of the Scriptures, or the purity of the dispensation there displayed.

Again, though the law of Moses was not the best which could be given as a general law to mankind, because a more perfect rule of conduct in the Christian law has been given since by Divine wisdom; yet it was the best which could be given to that nation under their peculiar circumstances. Moses in this acting with the circumspection which Solon" afterwards adopted, who being asked whether he had given the best possible laws to the Athenians, replied, that he had given them the best which they could receive. It appears that the hardness of their hearts, their inveterate prejudices, and attachment to their own customs was consulted in the provisions of that law in many other instances, as well as in the one particularly pointed out by our Saviour. And herein the lawgiver shewed a divine wisdom; in so framing his laws, as at once to introduce a better rule of conduct where the case would bear it, and in other instances making such regulations as by degrees brought the practice,

10 Eccles. viii. 11.

11 Plut. in Sol. 86.

which he wished to abolish, into disuse. He thought it to no purpose directly to thwart their prejudices, by making laws in formal opposition to them; which he knew would never be obeyed, if thus abruptly introduced. This is particularly shewn in the case of the avenger of blood, by Michaelis, in his Commentary on the Laws of Moses, Art. 136.

In the last place, the world was not in those early times, either before or after the giving of the law 12, prepared for that pure and exact rule of duty, which our Saviour afterwards established; and therefore the conduct of the patriarchs, and of those who lived under the law, is to be compared with that rule, which was known to them; and not tried by the strict rules of the gospel, which has since been revealed. Persons who lived 13 under a less degree of light than is now vouchsafed, may have been more faithful servants of God than those, who, with more knowledge, fall farther below that perfection to which they ought to attain, than the others did of the measure proposed to them.

And after all our pains to determine the real nature of the act recorded, and the guilt or innocence of the actor, we are very likely to come to a wrong conclusion. The circum

13 See Paley's Nat. Theol. c. xxvi. p. 573, 574. In the wide scale &c. 8th edit. Lond. 1804.

stances related are so few, that we know little more than the bare fact. But the nature of that is so changed by the circumstances under which it was done, the relation in which the actor stood to the persons and things around him, and the times in which he lived; that judgment cannot unerringly be passed without much more knowledge of these particulars than we possess. It is to discover these adjuncts that our courts of law make such scrupulous investigation of every minute particular, before they will venture to pass sentence.

CHAPTER II.

Abraham.-Jacob.-Jeremiah.

THERE are three distinguished characters, always spoken of in Scripture with terms of approbation, whose failures are represented by some as destructive of their claim to the divine revelation, to which they made pretensions. Against the first of these, Abraham, his' assertion that Sarah was his sister (for he did not deny her to be his wife) is urged as an instance of more than mortal frailty, as if he had violated every principle of truth, and meant to surrender his wife's honour to procure his own safety.

1 Gen. xii. 11. xx. 2

H

When, however, it is considered, that by the custom of that family, the brother was the especial guardian of the sister*; as is shewn by the part Laban took in the disposal of his sister Rebekah in marriage to Isaact; and by the conduct of Jacob's sons respecting their sister Dinah, especially of Simeon and Levi her uterine brethren; and by the mention of the brothers, Judges xxi. 22. as parties especially to be appeased for the violence offered to the young women at Shiloh, it appears much more probable that he urged this claim to the disposal of her, as the best method of enabling him to ward off the solicitations of the lawless people (as he supposed them to be) among whom he sojourned, till he could by some means or other escape from them altogether. Having this lawful claim upon her, he was guilty of no deception in not urging, what he esteemed a claim less likely to afford him protection. We have no reason, living under a settled system of laws enforced by power as well as justice, to suppose, in opposition to him, that claiming her as his wife would have preserved either of them in more safety. It is very clear there was no collusion on Abraham's part, for from the tenor of the story it appears, that Sarah was taken against the consent of them both. As for the two other objections which are urged against Abra