cubines; but merely of retaining them as slaves, edu. cating them in their families, employing them in domestick services; and either incorporating them by marriage as proselytes with the Israelites, or marrying them to their servants.

It cannot, however, be denied, that the male children, as well as the grown women, were consigned to the slaughter: and was not this very dreadful? Certainly; and wicked too, if Moses did it of his own mind, and to gratify his own passions. But this coincides with another subject, which I shall here, once for all, fully consider: namely, the orders given and executed respecting the extirpation of the Canaanites and Amalekites.

Every one acquainted with logick must perceive, that all who make these orders an objection to the divine original of the Old Testament, argue completely in a circle, and beg the question. They assume it as self-evident, that the Lord could never command Moses or Joshua to destroy these nations: they next execrate them for doing such things without authority: and thence they infer that God never spake to mankind by such wicked persons. But should they not first of all prove, that the Judge of the world could not justly give these orders? Till this be done, all their inferences from a false or disputed principle must be false or disputable; and all their declamations, mere rhetorical arts of imposing on the understanding by appealing to the passions.

A judge may condemn a criminal to die, and an executioner may take away his life, without murder, or even injustice; yet if an unauthorized person should

put him to death, he would be a murderer.-Man is surely accountable to his Maker; wickedness merits punishment: and the supreme Judge may inflict deserved punishment in what manner he sees good. According to the Scripture, death is the execution of a righteous judgment denounced against men, as transgressors of the divine law: and a more rational account of our maladies and miseries, and of the triumph of death over the whole human species, has not yet been given. If then sinners die, because God inflicts death as a part of their merited punishment: the justice is precisely the same, whether the sword or disease fulfil the divine mandate.. The Canaanites were sinners against the Lord exceedingly, and had filled up the measure of their crimes; who then will say, that He might not justly have destroyed them by pestilence, deluges, and earthquakes? Who will contend, that it would have been wicked in an angel to have executed the Creator's commission in cutting them off, as the army of Sennacherib was slain? And why might not the Lord select a nation, and, having sealed their commission by publick miracles, require them to extirpate an abominable race of men from the face. of the earth?

The same objection might be made, with equal validity, though not so plausibly, against all the ways, by which God inflicts death upon mankind: We must therefore, either deny that God inflicts diseases and death, and by a species of practical atheism resolve every thing into chance or necessity; or blaspheme God as cruel and unjust; or else allow that he may execute criminals in what way he sees good. The diVOL. III.

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vine commission to Moses and Joshua must indeed be proved by other arguments: but these considerations completely invalidate the objection, and demonstrate that God might justly give them such orders. If it be urged that famines, earthquakes, and pestilences, though equally destructive, do not so much contradict men's notions of God; it may be answered, that "the "world by wisdom knew not God;" and pagan deities, as characterized by Greek and Roman authors, prove men's notions in this respect too fallible and absurd, to be in the least depended on.

'But wherein could crying or smiling infants of'fend? To read without horror of their slaughter must 'undo every thing tender, sympathizing, or benevo'lent in our nature: and the sacrifice I must make to 'believe the Bible would be sufficient to determine ' my choice.'-Unbelief is then the effect of choice, not of unavoidable error or ignorance. But who can read of the ravages made by a conflagration, the miseries of famine and pestilence, or the desolations of an earthquake, without horror? Yet who disbelieves a well attested narrative of such events on that account? Or who, but an atheist, denies the justice of God in them?-The execution of criminals is calculated to excite horror, and not to gratify the finer feelings of henevolence: yet no declamation will convince a sober man that they are in all cases unnecessary, or that all concerned in them are sanguinary monster. -The aversion men feel to the scriptural history in this respect, above all other records of misery and bloodshed, arises from its opposition to the self-flattery of the human heart: for these awful executions militate

against their palliating notions concerning the evil of sin, and the demerit of despising and rebelling against God.

No doubt every humane heart revolts from the idea of slaughtering infants: yet infants die by thousands all over the world, with unspeakably more anguish, than a speedy undreaded death by the sword would occasion; and has not God the issues of life and death? Many a man who inherits an impaired estate, or a gouty constitution, sensibly feels, that children suffer in consequence of the crimes committed by their pa rents. Thus parents are punished in their children: and if the Lord sees good to prepare the souls of dying infants for heaven, and to receive them to himself; though the smiling or crying babes were supposed to have been as spotless as angels, they will not charge God with injustice or cruelty on account of their premature' death, let who will on earth presume to arraign his conduct. Set aside the doctrine of original sin, allow pain and death to be the appointment of God, and deny the future happiness of infants dying without actual transgression; and I could declaim against the ordinary conduct of providence in this respect, with as much vehemence, and at least as much plausibility, as Mr. P. does against the Bible; had I no more reverence for the works, than he has for the word of God.

But if some great and important ends were answered, by the peculiar method in which the Lord punished the nations of Canaan: then the objection is not only removed; but the divine wisdom is illustrated, and a presumptive argument afforded that these books

are a revelation from God.-Who can deny that the world has been full of atrocious crimes in every age? Or who will say, that it does not become the Ruler of the universe to take effectual methods for the restraint of man's wickedness? If then the Canaanites were addicted to abominable idolatries and detestable Justs: if their altars reeked with human sacrifices, and their religious worship was connected with the most shameless impurities: it must have been peculiarly worthy of God, to inflict vengeance on them in a way as extraordinary as their crimes had been, and suited to produce durable and extensive effects on the surrounding nations. His powerful hand and awful justice, and the difference between Him and the idols of the heathen, would be rendered far more conspicuous in punishing them by the sword of his worshippers, than if he had desolated the land by earthquakes and inundations: for these are commonly ascribed to natural causes, and God is forgotten even in the midst of them. Thus the affecting solemnities of a publick execution are generally deemed more conducive to the ends of good government, than the concealed punishment of a criminal. But especially these transactions were calculated to warn the Israelites themselves, against the abominations which they were commissioned to punish: and if they did not fully answer that purpose, we must impute it to the strength of human depravity. The whole history throws immense light on the plan of divine government: it shews the malignity of sin, and proves that it will be punished far more severely than we naturally imagine: it teaches all, who reverence the Bible, to fear the wrath of God