for ever; and since you have with alacrity
offered yourselves to assist us when we wanted that assistance on
all occasions, according to his command; it is but just, now all our
difficulties are over, that you should be permitted to enjoy rest, and
that we should trespass on your alacrity to help us no longer; that so,
if we should again stand in need of it, we may readily have it on any
future emergency, and not tire you out so much now as may make you
slower in assisting us another thee. We, therefore, return you our
thanks for the dangers you have undergone with us, and we do it not at
this thee only, but we shall always be thus disposed; and be so good as
to remember our friends, and to preserve in mind what advantages we
have had from them; and how you have put off the enjoyments of your own
happiness for our sakes, and have labored for what we have now, by the
goodwill of God, obtained, and resolved not to enjoy your own prosperity
till you had afforded us that assistance. However, you have, by joining
your labor with ours, gotten great plenty of riches, and will carry home
with you much prey, with gold and silver, and, what is more than all
these, our good-will towards you, and a mind willingly disposed to make
a requital of your kindness to us, in what case soever you shall desire
it, for you have not omitted any thing which Moses beforehand required
of you, nor have you despised him because he was dead and gone from you,
so that there is nothing to diminish that gratitude which we owe to you.
We therefore dismiss you joyful to your own inheritances; and we
entreat you to suppose, that there is no limit to be set to the intimate
relation that is between us; and that you will not imagine, because this
river is interposed between us, that you are of a different race from
us, and not Hebrews; for we are all the posterity of Abraham, both we
that inhabit here, and you that inhabit there; and it is the same God
that brought our forefathers and yours into the world, whose worship and
form of government we are to take care of, which he has ordained, and
are most carefully to observe; because while you continue in those laws,
God will also show himself merciful and assisting to you; but if you
imitate the other nations, and forsake those laws, he will reject your
nation." When Joshua had spoken thus, and saluted them all, both those
in authority one by one, and the whole multitude in common, he himself
staid where he was;