the hardness of heart, with which the Scripture so often reproaches them, is not for their being more attached to earthly things than other people, but for being so much as they were, after having received such particular favours from the hand of GoD, and seen the great wonders that He had wrought for them. It is true, much resolution was necessary to resist the influence of the bad example of all other nations. When an Israelite was out of his own country, and amongst infidels, they reproached him with having no religion at all, because they did not see him offer any sacrifice, or worship idols: and when he told them of his GoD, the Creator of heaven and earth, they laughed at him, and asked him where He was. These taunts were hard to bear: David himself says that, when he was an exile, he fed himself day and night with his tears, because they daily asked him Where is thy God? " Weak minds were staggered with these attacks, and often gave way to them.

The propensity that all mankind has to pleasure heightened the temptation: as the heathen feasts were very frequent and magnificent, curiosity easily prevailed upon young people, especially women, to go and see the pomp of their processions, the manner of dressing out the victims, the dancing, the choirs of music, and ornaments of their temples. Some officious body engaged them to take a place at the feast, and eat the meat that was offered to idols, or come and lodge at his house. They made

Psalm xliii. 3.

acquaintance and carried on love intrigues, which generally ended either in downright debauchery, or marrying contrary to the law. Thus did idolatry insinuate itself by the most common allurements of women and good cheer. In the time of Moses the Israelites were engaged in the infamous mysteries of Baal-Peor by the Midianitish women, who were the strange women that perverted Solomon.

r

Besides, the law of God might appear too severe to them. They were not allowed to sacrifice in any place but one; by the hands too of such priests only as were descended from Aaron, and according to some very strict rules. They had but three great feasts in the whole year, the Passover, Pentecost, and Feast of Tabernacles: a very few for people that lived in plenty, and in a climate that inclined them to pleasure. As they lived in the country, employed in husbandry, they could not conveniently meet together but at feasts, and for that reason were obliged to borrow some of strangers, and invent others. Do not we ourselves, who think we are so spiritual, and no doubt ought to be so, if we were true Christians, often prefer the possession of temporal things to the hope of spiritual? And do we not endeavour to reconcile many diversions with the Gospel which all antiquity has judged to be inconsistent with it, and against which our instructors are daily exclaiming? It is true, we hold idolatry in detestation; but it is now no longer a familiar sight, and has been quite out of fashion

above a thousand years. We are not then to imagine that the Israelites were more stupid than other people, because the particular favours they had received from GoD could not reclaim them from idolatry. But it must be owned that the wound of original sin was very deep, when such holy instructions and repeated miracles were found insufficient to raise men above sensible things. But, however impure the state of the Israelites may appear, we see a much greater degree of blindness and impurity in other nations, particularly among the Greeks and Egyptians, who were in other respects the most enlightened,

CHAP. XX.

Their political State, Liberty, and domestic Power.

AFTER religion, we must say something of the political state of the Israelites. They were perfectly free, especially before they had kings. They had neither homages, nor manors, nor prohibitions from hunting or fishing; nor any of those kinds

And here we may see the absolute necessity of that Holy Spirit which the Gospel has promised to purify the heart from all its defilements, to bring life and immortality to light, and o give us correct notions of that infinitely pure and holy Being who is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.

of dependencies which are so common among us, that lords themselves are not exempt from them. For we see sovereign princes that are vassals; and even officers under other sovereigns, as in Germany and Italy. They enjoyed therefore that liberty so highly valued by the Greeks and Romans; and it was their own fault that they did not enjoy it for ever it was God's design they should, as appears from His reproof delivered to them by Samuel, when they asked for a king; and Gideon seemed to be well apprised of it, since, when they offered to make him king, and secure the kingdom to his posterity, he answered generously, I will not rule over you, neither shall my sons rule over you; the LORD shall rule over you.'

C

Their government was therefore neither a monarchy, aristocracy, nor democracy, but a theocracy, as Josephus calls it: that is, God Himself

• The state of things in these countries is strangely altered since the good Abbé wrote; and even since the preceding edition of this work was published, viz. in 1805. Some of the dependent German states have been exalted to regal authority, and the ecclesiastico-political government of Italy has been totally changed! (1809)

d

b

1 Sam. x. 18, &c.

C

Judg. viii. 23.

Though they were guided by GoD's peculiar direction, yet the form of their government was at first aristocratical, which continued to be the basis of it ever after. It commenced from the death of Jacob, who divided them into twelve tribes, appointing his sons, with the two sons of Joseph, to be rulers or princes over them, Gen. xlix. See also Exod. vi. 4. Josh. xxii. 14. No one tribe had superiority over another; for it is said, Gen. xlix. 16. Dan shall judge his people in the same manner as one of the tribes of Israel. And hence it is that, upon the

governed them immediately by the law that He had given them. As long as they observed it faithfully, they lived in freedom and safety; as soon as they transgressed it, to follow their own imaginations, they fell into anarchy and confusion; which the Scripture shews, when, to account for the prodigious wickedness of the times, it says, In those days there was no king in Israel, every one did what was right in his own eyes. This confusion divided and weakened them, and made them become a prey to their enemies; till, recollecting themselves, they turned to God, and He sent them some deliverer. Thus they lived under the Judges, relapsing time after time into idolatry and disobedience to the law of GOD,' and consequently into

death of Joshua, the people enquire of God, who should go up for them against the Canaanites, Judg. i. 1. From this view we see the meaning of that important prophecy, Gen. xlix. 10. The sceptre shall not depart from Judah till Shiloh come; not a sceptre, as most interpreters understand it, to arise in Judah's family, some ages after the death of Jacob, which is against the propriety of all language; not a dominion to be exercised by Judah over all the other tribes, which it never obtained; but that the government now settled in each of the tribes, which would depart from the rest long before the coming of Shiloh, should remain with Judah till Shiloh came. Accordingly the Assyrian captivity was ruin to the ten tribes; but the Babylonish captivity was only a seventy years' transportation of Judah into a foreign country, where they continued under heads and rulers of their own; which privilege they enjoyed till after the death of CHRIST, and in some sort till the destruction of Jerusalem.-See this proved at large in the third incomparable Dissertation of the Bishop of London.-E. F. Judg. ii. 11, 22.

• Judg. xxi. 25.