ould restrain the fury of his
followers, protect the life of the ruffianly traitor, and thus appeal to
God as the witness of his innocence:

"O Lord, my God! if I have done this,
If there be iniquity in my hands,
If I have rewarded evil to him that was at peace with me,
Yea I have delivered him that without cause was mine enemy."[178]

It is true that he does bitterly curse several living persons; of whom
it is observable that some had done him no sort of personal injury; as
Doeg the Edomite--the Nana Sahib of his day--who anticipated the scenes
of Cawnpore, in the streets of Nob, by mercilessly butchering
unoffending men, helpless women, and innocent babes. But surely no
friend of humanity can imagine that it is improper that the chief
magistrate of Israel, anointed for the very purpose of being a terror to
evil doers, should express his righteous indignation against such
atrocities; nor confound such public execration with the petty gnawings
of private revenge. Still less can the fearer of God doubt the propriety
of his expressing by the mouth of his prophet, that displeasure he
signally displayed by his providence, scathing and blasting the accursed
wretch into a terror to all bloody and deceitful men who shall read
their own warning in his doom.

"God shall likewise destroy thee forever,
He shall take thee away and pluck thee from thy dwelling,
And root thee out of the land of the living."[179]

We have the most solemn assurance, that every one of the historical
incidents of Scripture is recorded for our instruction, and that every
prophecy gives a lesson to all ages. "_Now all these things happened
unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon
whom the ends of the world are come._"[180] The imprecations of the
Bible against individual sinners are the gibbets on which these
malefactors are hung up for warning to all men to flee the crimes that
brought them to that fate.

It is put beyond the possibility of doubt, by the combined testimony of
the Lord and his apostles, that by far the greater number of the curses
which David uttered, he spoke in the person of Christ himself, of whom
he was a type; and with direct reference to the crimes and punishment of
his enemies. Thus the Sixty-ninth Psalm, and the One hundred and ninth,
pre-eminently the cursing Psalms, are most explicitly and repeatedly
asserted by Christ, by Peter, and by John, to belong to Chri