f that prince. He has there specified a great number of nations,
which, though separated from each other by vast tracts of country, and
still more widely by the diversity of their manners, customs, and
language, were however all united, by the same sentiments of esteem,
reverence, and love for a prince, whose government they wished, if
possible, to have continued for ever, so much happiness and tranquillity
did they enjoy under it.(30)

To this amiable and salutary government, let us oppose the idea which the
sacred writings give us of those monarchs and conquerors so much boasted
by antiquity, who, instead of making the happiness of mankind the sole
object of their care, were prompted by no other motives than those of
interest and ambition. The Holy Spirit represents them under the symbols
of monsters generated from the agitation of the sea, from the tumult,
confusion, and dashing of the waves one against the other; and under the
image of cruel wild beasts, which spread terror and desolation
universally, and are for ever gorging themselves with blood and slaughter;
bears, lions, tigers, and leopards.(31) How strong and expressive is this
colouring!

Nevertheless, it is often from such destructive models, that the rules and
maxims of the education generally bestowed on the children of the great
are borrowed; and it is these ravagers of nations, these scourges of
mankind, they propose to make them resemble. By inspiring them with the
sentiments of a boundless ambition, and the love of false glory, they
become (to borrow an expression from Scripture) "young lions; they learn
to catch the prey, and devour men--to lay waste cities, to turn lands and
their fatness into desolation by the noise of their roaring."(32) And when
this young lion is grown up, God tells us, that the noise of his exploits,
and the renown of his victories, are nothing but a frightful roaring,
which fills all places with terror and desolation.

The examples I have hitherto mentioned, extracted from the history of the
Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, prove sufficiently the
supreme power exercised by God over all empires; and the relation he has
thought fit to establish between the rest of the nations of the earth and
his own peculiar people. The same truth appears as conspicuously under the
kings of Syria and Egypt, successors of Alexander the Great: between whose
history, and that of the Jews under the Maccabees, every body knows the