ent of the
good wherewith I said, I would benefit them." *

* Jeremiah xviii. 7-10.

This declaration is verified in the divine administration. God often
bears with nations and communities, even to long suffering; but if
they continue to revolt, he fails not to punish their sin upon them.
When a community hath filled up the measure of its iniquity, judgment
is executed upon it; not according to the moral character of those who
then compose it, but according to its character considered as a nation
which hath been tried God's appointed time.

While a community is on trial its conduct is recorded; its acts of
disobedience to the divine Sovereign are charged to the community, and
when its probation ends, they are brought into the reckoning and
punished upon it, unless repentance and reformation intervene and
prevent it. That "the sin of the Amorites was not full," was assigned
as a reason for deferring the settlement of Abram's race in the land
of Canaan. God would not enter into judgment with them, till the
measure of their guilt had reached a certain height; but the sins of
every generation helped to swell the account, till they were ripe for
ruin. The Hebrews were then ordered to destroy them utterly--"every
thing that breathed." It was not the sins of only that generation
which occasioned this sentence, but the sins of the nations. Many
individuals who had no personal guilt were included in the sentence,
and destroyed by its execution. The infants perished with the adults.
The divine judgments executed on other wicked communities, have been
similar. Sodom, and her daughters were each of them a petty kingdom;
and when they had severally filled up the measure of their crimes,
they all perished together, old and young.

If more examples are desired, look to the seed of Jacob. That people
had a long probation; but when they had filled up the measure of
national guilt, their sins were brought to remembrance and punished
upon them. The ten tribes revolted from God, when they left the house
of David and set Jeroboam on the throne. For more than two centuries
and an half God waited with them, and warned them of the evils which
their sins would bring upon them; but they repented not. When their
iniquity was full, he gave their enemies power over them; "rooted
them up out of the good land which he had given their fathers, and
scattered them beyond the river."

The kingdom of Judah remained about an hundred and thirty years