they almost constantly comply with
them in their of or disobedience to the Divine laws, and suffer Divine
laws to go into disuse or contempt, in order to kings and governors; and
that they sub-political laws and commands of those governors, instead
of the righteous laws of God, which all mankind ought ever to obey, let
their kings and governors say what they please to the contrary; this
preference of human before Divine laws seeming to me the principal
character of idolatrous or antichristian nations. Accordingly, Josephus
well observes, Antiq. B. IV. ch. 8. sect. 17, that it was the duty of
the people of Israel to take care that their kings, when they should
have them, did not exceed their proper limits of power, and prove
ungovernable by the laws of God, which would certainly be a most
pernicious thing to their Divine settlement. Nor do I think that
negligence peculiar to the Jews: those nations which are called
Christians, are sometimes indeed very solicitous to restrain their kings
and governors from breaking the human laws of their several kingdoms,
but without the like care for restraining them from breaking the laws of
God. "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto men more
than to God, judge ye," Acts 4:19. "We ought to obey God rather than
men," ver. 29.

[24] What Josephus adds here is very remarkable, that this Mount Moriah
was not only the very place where Abraham offered up Isaac long ago, but
that God had foretold to David by a prophet, that here his son should
build him a temple, which is not directly in any of our other copies,
though very agreeable to what is in them, particularly in 1 Chronicles
21:25, 28; 22:1, to which places I refer the reader.

[25] Of the quantity of gold and silver expended in the building of
Solomon's temple, and whence it arose, see the description of ch. 13.
[26] David is here greatly blamed by some for recommending Joab and
Shimei to be punished by Solomon, if he could find a proper occasion,
after he had borne with the first a long while, and seemed to have
pardoned the other entirely, which Solomon executed accordingly; yet
I cannot discern any fault either in David or Solomon in these cases.
Joab's murder of Abner and Amasa were very barbarous, and could not
properly be forgiven either by David or Solomon; for a dispensing power
in kings for the crime of willful murder is warranted by no law of God,
nay, is directly against it every where; nor is it, for c