nts out of
your stock. However, O blessed army! wonder that you are become so many
from one father: and truly, the land of Canaan can now hold you,
as being yet comparatively few; but know ye that the whole world is
proposed to be your place of habitation for ever. The multitude of your
posterity also shall live as well in the islands as on the continent,
and that more in number than are the stars of heaven. And when you are
become so many, God will not relinquish the care of you, but will afford
you an abundance of all good things in times of peace, with victory
and dominion in times of war. May the children of your enemies have an
inclination to fight against you; and may they be so hardy as to come
to arms, and to assault you in battle, for they will not return with
victory, nor will their return be agreeable to their children and wives.
To so great a degree of valor will you be raised by the providence of
God, who is able to diminish the affluence of some, and to supply the
wants of others."

5. Thus did Balaam speak by inspiration, as not being in his own power,
but moved to say what he did by the Divine Spirit. But then Balak was
displeased, and said he had broken the contract he had made, whereby he
was to come, as he and his confederates had invited him, by the promise
of great presents: for whereas he came to curse their enemies, he had
made an encomium upon them, and had declared that they were the happiest
of men. To which Balaam replied, "O Balak, if thou rightly considerest
this whole matter, canst thou suppose that it is in our power to be
silent, or to say any thing, when the Spirit of God seizes upon us?--for
he puts such words as he pleases in our mouths, and such discourses as
we are not ourselves conscious of. I well remember by what entreaties
both you and the Midianites so joyfully brought me hither, and on that
account I took this journey. It was my prayer, that I might not put any
affront upon you, as to what you desired of me; but God is more powerful
than the purposes I had made to serve you; for those that take upon them
to foretell the affairs of mankind, as from their own abilities, are
entirely unable to do it, or to forbear to utter what God suggests to
them, or to offer violence to his will; for when he prevents us and
enters into us, nothing that we say is our own. I then did not intend
to praise this army, nor to go over the several good things which God
intended to do to their race; but