gs, if they prove obedient,
and adds the most awful and striking denunciations against them, if they
rebel, or forsake the true God.

23. I have before observed, that the sanctions of the Mosaic law, were
temporal rewards and punishments; those of the New Testament are
eternal. These last, as they are so infinitely more forcible than the
first, were reserved for the last, best gift to mankind--and were
revealed by the Messiah, in the fullest and clearest manner. Moses, in
this book, directs the method in which the Israelites were to deal with
the seven nations, whom they were appointed to punish for their
profligacy and idolatry; and whose land they were to possess, when they
had driven out the old inhabitants. He gives them excellent laws, civil
as well as religious, which were after the standing municipal laws of
that people. This book concludes with Moses' song and death.

_Of Joshua._

24. The book of Joshua contains the conquests of the Israelites over the
seven nations, and their establishment in the promised land. Their
treatment of these conquered nations must appear to you very cruel and
unjust, if you consider it as their own act, unauthorised by a positive
command; but they had the most absolute injunctions not to spare these
corrupt people--"to make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy to them,
but utterly to destroy them:"--and the reason is given, "lest they
should turn away the Israelites from following the Lord, that they might
serve other gods." The children of Israel are to be considered as
instruments in the hand of the Lord, to punish those whose idolatry and
wickedness had deservedly brought destruction on them: this example,
therefore, cannot be pleaded in behalf of cruelty, or bring any
imputation on the character of the Jews.

25. With regard to other cities, which did not belong to these seven
nations, they were directed to deal with them, according to the common
law of arms at that time. If the city submitted, it became tributary,
and the people were spared; if it resisted, the men were to be slain,
but the women and children saved.

26. Yet, though the crime of cruelty cannot be justly laid to their
charge on this occasion, you will observe in the course of their
history, many things recorded of them very different from what you would
expect from the chosen people of God, if you supposed them selected on
account of their own merit; their national character was by no means
amiable; and