period of human life was intended to be a bleffing to mankind; and that, notwithstanding the frailty and corruption of man, it has proved and continues to prove fo. Among the circumftances which contributed to fwell the wickedness of the ancient world to its enormous magnitude, there were few probably more powerful than the apparent diftance to which death was removed. In the present day, when he who has numbered seventy or eighty fucceffive units, has numbered the years within which he and almost all his cotemporaries of the human race will be called to ftand before the tribunal of their judge; to what an excess of iniquity do multitudes advance! What then would be the measure of their guilt, if they might with reasonable expectation look to many additional centuries of life? At prefent too, the reign of the oppreffor, whether in a private or in a public ftation, is neceffarily fhort. The hour that fhall fweep him away is at hand. Were life restored to its antediluvian period, he might continue for nearly a thousand years years to render his fellow creatures miferable. "I have feen the wicked," faith the Pfalmift, "in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay-tree. Yet "he paffed away, and lo, he was not: yea I fought him, but he could not be "found (d)." The common course of nature speedily puts an end to his career; and his place may be filled by the righteous. To the righteous themfelves, more ef pecially if they are burthened with afflictions, the shortnefs of life is a gracious difpenfation. They enter the fooner into the manfions of the "bleffed which die in "the Lord: that they may reft from their "labours; and their works do follow "them ()." (d) Pfalın xxxvii. 35, 36. (e) Rev. xiv. 13. CHAP. II. SUMMARY VIEW OF THE ORIGIN OF THE JEWISH RACE, AND OF THE THE fallen nature of man, that inherent fource of corrupt difpofitions and corrupt practice, remained unaltered by the flood. There does not indeed appear to have been any circumstance in that difpenfation, awful and ftupendous as it was, which could reach the internal conftitution of the foul. The truth of this conclufion is afcertained by the unequivocal declaration of God himself; who, when speaking immediately after the deluge concerning the future race of mankind which was to spring from the family that defcended from the ark, and even when promifing to that future race his continual protection and bounty, characterises them collectively in terms fimilar to to those which he had applied to their wicked ancestors whom he had recently deftroyed: "the imagination of man's "heart is evil from his youth (a).” The uniform tenor of the holy Scriptures, and the univerfal teftimony of experience, concur in evincing the undiminished power of the original depravity. The facred hiftorian, haftening to record events fo interesting to his own people and to all mankind, as the vocation of Abraham and the Divine promises confirmed to the fucceeding Patriachs, paffes rapidly over the period intervening between the deluge and the call of the father of the Jewish race. The flight notices, however, which he gives of the conduct of men are fuch as feem to indicate the general prevalence of prefumptuous guilt. Their attempt to build the tower of Babel was evidently in direct oppofition to an humble dependence upon God. And the terms, in which the Supreme Being manifefts his indigna(a) Gen. viii. 21. tion on that occafion, ftrongly fuggeft the idea, that men were arrived at a very advanced stage of general and daring wickednefs: "This they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, "which they have imagined to do(b).” In the fulness therefore of wifdom and mercy, the Supreme Being, in order to preserve true religion alive among mankind, and to prepare the way for the coming of the promifed Redeemer, had determined to felect to himself from among the families of the earth a peculiar people; to place them in a country which fhould belong to them from generation to generation; to reveal to them a clear knowledge of his attributes and perfections; to deliver to them a system of laws and facred rites adapted to answer the purposes both of rendering those who should receive them religious, and of fhadowing out the future fufferings of Jefus Chrift and the bleffings thereby to be purchased; and to reward the obedience of this chofen race with temporal mercies fo |