sharing the influence of the divine mercy, and call on them, on that very account to celebrate the praises of their common God. Now surely mercies confined to the chosen people, from which all other human beings were excluded, could never supply a motive to creatures, thus irreversibly condemned, for gratitude and praise to that God, in whose mercies they had no share, from whose pardoning love they could entertain no hope.

*

Further still, it is admitted that the whole Jewish economy was not for the exclusive advantage of the Jews themselves, but for the benefit of all mankind, by preserving the principles of the moral law, and the great truths of religion, by preparing the way for the coming of that "Messiah, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed," and especially by exhibiting practically and experimentally, as it were, the attributes, the glory, the moral government of God. Now how could it serve this purpose, if the principles on which the government of the chosen people was conducted, were directly opposite to those, by which the divine dispensations towards the rest of mankind were regulated? if under the Jewish scheme, repentance were encouraged by assurances of pardon, and in every variety of circumstances long-suffering mercy exhibited, and human weakness and frailty regarded with compassion, and consoled with hope, while under the scheme of divine government over all the rest of mankind, condemnation was predestined, repentance impossible, and pardon hopeless? Would not this seem to place one part of Scripture in opposition to another, and to exhibit the moral government of men in a point of view whence it appears not only terrific and revolting, but inconsistent and contradictory? Surely this connexion of the Jewish economy with the entire plan of God's moral government, and the perfect consistency and harmony of mercy, in which both were conducted, is as clearly as it is beautifully expressed in the solemn and affecting prayer of Solomon, at the dedication of the temple, when he thus implores the merciful attention of God to the prayers, first of the chosen people, and then of all other human beings, who from them should learn to offer up their prayers and supplications to the universal Father and Lord; "but will God

* Vide the Author's Lectures on the Pentateuch, vol. ii. part 3, lect. 5 and 6.

in very deed dwell with men on the earth?

Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee, how much less this house which I have built? Have respect therefore to the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Lord my God, to hearken unto the cry and the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee; that thine eyes may be open upon this house day and night, upon the place whereof thou hast said, that thou wouldst put thy name there, to hearken unto the prayer which thy servant prayeth towards this place. Hearken therefore unto the supplications of thy servant, and of thy people of Israel, which they shall make towards this place: hear thou from thy dwelling place even from heaven; and when thou hearest, forgive. If a man sin against his neighbour, and an oath be laid upon him to make him swear, and the oath come before thine altar in this house ; then hear thou from heaven, and do, and judge thy servants, by requiting the wicked, by recompensing his way upon his own head, and by justifying the righteous, by giving him according to his righteousness. And if thy people Israel be put to the worse before the enemy, because they have sinned against thee, and shall return, and confess thy name, and pray, and make supplication before thee in this house. Then hear thou from the heavens, and forgive the sin of thy people Israel, and bring them again unto the land which thou gavest to them and to their fathers. When the heaven is shut up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; yet if they pray toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou dost afflict them; then hear thou from heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, and of thy people Israel, when thou hast taught them the good way wherein they should walk; and send rain upon the land which thou hast given unto thy people for an inheritance. If there be dearth in the land, if there be pestilence, or if there be blasting or mildew, locusts or caterpillars; if their enemies besiege them in the cities of their land; whatsoever sore or whatsoever sickness there be; then what prayer or supplication soever shall be made of any man; or of all thy people Israel, when every one shall know his own sore and. his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands in this house: then hear thou from heaven, thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man according unto all his ways, whose heart

thou knowest; for thou only knowest the heart of the children of men; that they may fear thee, to walk in thy ways so long as they live in the land which thou gavest unto our fathers. Moreover, concerning the stranger which is not of thy people Israel, but is come from a far country for thy great name's sake, and thy mighty hand, and thy stretched-out arm, if they come and pray in this house. Then hear thou from the heavens, even from thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for; that all people of the earth may know thy name and fear thee, as doth thy people Israel, and may know that this house which I have built is called by thy name.'

Now let me ask any unprejudiced mind, whether this whole prayer does not imply that men are not dealt with according to the inflexible and irreversible decree of absolute predestination, but according to the ideas reason adopts from Scripture of the government of a just, but at the same time a placable and merciful God; and whether all the people of the earth are not called on to attend to the specimen of God's moral government, exhibited in the history of His chosen people, and to conclude from it that they also are under a similar government, encouraging repentance by the assurance of pardon, and softening the inflexibility of divine justice, by pointing out its union with long-suffering

mercy.

Should it be alleged, that this prayer of Solomon relates only to the temporal blessings and punishments which formed the sanction of the Jewish law, and therefore cannot be applied to an argument which relates to election or reprobation, as affecting the happiness or misery of a future state; it may be answered; that the apostacy or penitence of the Jew or of the stranger, alluded to by the devout monarch, and their effects under the divine government in the present life, were clear indications and presages of the effects of the same apostacy, or of the same repentance in another world, under the continuance of the same system, and the government of the same God.

This is perhaps more expressly implied in the declaration of Ezekiel: "Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth it shall

2 Chron. vi. 18—34.

die."* The death of the soul seems to imply more than any mere temporal judgment, terminating in the present life.

Still more decidedly is it affirmed in the prophetic declaration of Daniel, combining the ultimate deliverance of the chosen people of God with the corresponding deliverance of the righteous in a future state; "at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book; and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt: and they that be wise, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever."†

This declaration surely proves that the rewards and punishments of the future world will be distributed, not according to the eternal decrees of absolute predestination, uninfluenced by the foreknowledge of how the elect or reprobate would act ; but according to the wisdom or folly, the sloth or the activity, the carelessness or the zeal, the selfishness or the benevolence manifested by the children of men in the use they make of the powers and advantages with which they are entrusted in the present life.

But, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the Scriptures adduced, had only adverted immediately, to the temporal sanctions of obedience or disobedience amongst the Jews; can it be believed, that the principles which it is declared are adopted by God in the distribution of temporal rewards and punishments, as necessarily resulting from His justice and mercy, will not much more necessarily regulate the distribution of eternal rewards and punishments? Can it be believed, that the ways of God should be strictly equal in the adjustment of men's tem poral enjoyments and sufferings, according to their works; but that their future happiness or misery should be decided by an unconditional an unalterable decree of election or reprobation, formed before the individuals were born, or had done any good or evil; and which, as it is uninfluenced by the foreknowledge of the good or evil they should hereafter do, cannot be derived, as far as human reason can judge, from any regard to those eternal principles of justice and mercy, according to which Scripture Dan. xii. 1-3.

* Ezekiel xviii. 4.

declares, God governs His people in the present life? Is not this utterly inconsistent and incredible? This would be to declare, that God observes the strictest equity and mercy in this world, all inequality in which could be so easily rectified in the next ; but that in the future state His ways would be unequal and severe, when the effects of that inequality are irremediable and eternal.

Now the representations of Scripture seem directly contrary to this. In this world, a great inequality appears to exist. No proportion seems to be permanently preserved between the virtue and piety of individuals, and their worldly prosperity. Sickness and health, riches and poverty, life and death, seem to be distributed amongst the sons of men, with no fixed relation to their moral character. The tares are permitted to grow with the wheat in equal luxuriance till the last day, when a perfect discrimination shall be made, and God shall "take to Himself great power, and reign; by rendering to every man according to his works,"* and not according to a decree of predestination, formed before the existence of all human beings, and unalterable by any thing in their power to perform. Surely then such a decree is wholly repugnant to the declarations of Scripture, the analogy of nature, and the equity and mercy of God.

* Compare Rev. xi. 17. Matt. xvi. 27 and xxv. 31-46.