fury of the house of the Lord. They were ftrictly forbidden to appropriate any thing to their own use, which fhews that they were not actuated by the paffions of other conquerors. And as they did not indulge their natural difpofition of avarice, we may well fuppofe they did not indulge that of cruelty, but confidered themselves as the mere executioners of the orders of heaven.

Notwithstanding the pofitive order to deftroy every living thing in Jericho, making the firft fruits of their conquefts a kind of whole burned offering to God, who gave it to them, one perfon was tempted to tranfgrefs this order, by taking, and hiding, fome part of the fpoil. For this the people fuffered a partial defeat in their next attempt, which was upon a town called Ai. But the offender was discovered by a folemn lot, conducted under the immediate direction of God; and, as an example of difobedience, he was publicly stoned to death.

This example would operate to deter any more of the people from difobeying any other divine command. And the conqueft

of

of a city fo fortified as Jericho was, and effected in the extraordinary manner that has been related, could not but ftrike a terror into all the inhabitants of the country, and imprefs them with the idea of the fuperiority of the God of Ifrael to their own divinities; though they had worshipped them in the most expenfive manner, facrificing to them not only human victims in general, but frequently even their own children.

I have no occafion to recite any farther particulars of the conqueft of Canaan. Thefe events, of which the whole nation of the Ifraelites were witneffes, and the history of which was committed to writing at the time, must have convinced them that they were under the direction of the God of nature and of the univerfe; and the well known effect of this conviction upon that nation, little difpofed as they were to believe any thing of the kind, viz. fo unfavourable to that propenfity to idolatry which affected them no less than all other antient nations, is fufficient to fatisfy any person of reflection,

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tion, and who attends to the principles of human nature, of the certainty of thefe events, which imply an actual interpofition of Divine Providence in favour of the Ifraelitish nation, and furnifh a proof of the truth of that fyftem of revelation, which commenced with the inftitutions of Mofes, and was completed by the miffion of Jefus

Chrift.

Such a firm perfuafion in the whole Jewish nation, circumftanced as they are well known to have becu, on the suppofition that the events above recited never took place, and that the written history of them is not authentic, would be a miracle of a much more extraordinary nature than any of thofe that are objected to, and a miracle without any reasonable object. For what rational end could have been answered by fuch a fupernatural infatuation (for it could not have been any thing less) as fhould induce a whole nation firmly to believe all the particulars that I have recited, viz. the account of all the plagues of Egypt, their paffing through the red fea

and

and the river Jordan, the Divine Being fpeaking to them from Mount Sinai, and this laft inftance of the miraculous fall of the walls of Jericho, without any human means, and that the books containing the history of these particulars were written and published while the memory of the things recorded in them was recent; when, if the account had been fabulous, it must have been exceedingly easy to have exposed it.

No nation in the world, not even the moft credulous, (and the Jews have always been the least fo) could have been impofed upon in fo gross a manner. And this was not in one particular, but in many; and those on the largest scale, the farthest in the world from refembling tricks of legerdemain, fuch as may be exhibited before a few perfons in a private room. But, for the fatisfaction of all mankind in future ages, it was requifite that those miracles, which ushered in the first difpenfation of revealed religion, should be fo circumstanced with refpect both to number and magnitude, as to

be out of the reach of all reafonable objection, though not of mere cavil; and fuch is actually the cafe. We may even venture to say that, had the moft fceptical perfon in the world been afked, what he himself would wished to have been done, in order to fatisfy him that the author of Nature had really interpofed in the government of the world, he could not have pitched upon more ftriking things, as an evidence of it, than the ten plagues of Egypt, the paffage of the red fea and the river Jordan, the articulate and audible voice from Mount Sinai, pronouncing not a few words only (for in that the hearing might be deceived) but fo many as compofed the ten commandments, and laftly the falling of the walls of Jericho, all of them exhibited in the prefence of a whole nation, and fome of them even more nations than one.

In order to fatisfy diftant ages, that fuch things as these really took place, what more could have been demanded, than that the history of them fhould be committed to writing while the facts were recent, that folemn

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