Slike strani
PDF
ePub

temporal punishment denounced against idolatry by the Jewish Law, to the family of the idolater, might be the tenderest mercy, as the most probable method of checking the contagion of that infectious crime, amongst a people who were habituated to consider temporal punishment as the sure criterion of divine displeasure; and whom its infliction was therefore the only effectual mode of awakening to serious reflection and humble penitence.

Thus the principle of visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, unto the third and fourth generation, by extending the temporal judgments denounced against the perpetration of idolatry to the immediate posterity of the idolater, is perfectly consistent with the divine justice; because it interferes not with that final retribution at which every man shall be rewarded according to his works. It was in truth a dispensation of mercy calculated to restrain the crimes of the parents by one of the most powerful motives which can influence the human heart, the terror of involving their innocent progeny in temporal calamity and ruin; while, with respect to the children, it tended to guard them against the otherwise almost resistless contagion of parental example, and place them in the most advantageous circumstances for recovering their virtue and their piety. It was an essential part of that system of extraordinary providential government, which Jehovah judged it necessary to exercise over the Jewish nation; since national rewards and punishments necessarily extended beyond the limits of a single generation, in order to produce any permanent and general effect. And finally, it was strictly analogous to the general system of the divine government over the whole human race; since in what is termed the common course of events, we perpetually find families and nations for a long series of years involved in the mischiefs arising from their parents follies and crimes, or enjoying the blessings derived from their wisdom, virtue, and fortitude. The Jewish scheme proceeded on exactly the same principles; with this only difference, that the Supreme Jehovah, the immediate Sovereign as well as the tutelary God of the Hebrew nation, undertook to dispense this, as well as every other species of reward and punishment, by an immediate and * extraordinary

* Warburton's observation on this subject, Book V. sect. v. Vol. iv. p. 335, seems just and conclusive: "God," says he, "supported the Israelites in "Judea, by an extraordinary administration of his Providence; the con sequences of which were, great temporal blessings, to which they had no "natural claim, given them on condition of obedience. Nothing, therefore,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

ding

Providence, in which justice should be tempered with abundant mercy confining the providential and temporary punishment for the parents crimes to the third and fourth generation; while it encouraged adherence to virtue and to God, by the assurance of a reward, similar indeed in kind, but infinitely superior in degree, and which under the common course of events could not be hoped for; promising to extend the blessings obtained by parental obedience and piety, even to the thousandth generation of those who love God.

[ocr errors]

Thus we perceive, how perfectly all the parts of this awful and wonderful dispensation harmonized together; and with what strict truth, as well as majestic sublimity, the Hebrew Lawgiver describes Jehovah proclaiming his name:* "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving "iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means "clear the guilty;" (and in perfect consistence with these attri-butes) "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, "and upon the children's children."

66

That this sanction of the Jewish Law was not to be understood · as a general principle of the divine economy, under every form of civil society, and every degree of religious improvement; but merely as a necessary part of that administration of an extraordinary Providence by which the Jewish Law was sanctioned and upheld during the earlier periods of its existence; has been proved by Warburton, from a circumstance which infidel writers have laid much stress upon as an instance of contradiction between different parts of Scripture; when in truth it was only a gradual change in the divine system, wisely and mercifully adapted to the gradual improvemeut of the human mind. Towards the conclusion of this extraordinary economy, (observes Warburton) when God by the later prophets reveals his purpose of giving them a NEW DISPENSATION, in which a future state of rewards and punishments was to be brought to light (or rather, according to my system, substituted in place of an immediate

[ocr errors]

66

"could be more equitable than, on the violation of that condition, to withdraw those extraordinary blessings from the children of a father thus offending. How then can the Deist charge this Law with injustice? "since a posterity, when innocent, was affected only in their civil conditional rights, and when deprived of those which were natural and unconditional, were always guilty."

[ocr errors]

་་

* Exod. xxxiv. 6 & 7.

*

extraordinary Providence as the sanction of religion;) it is then declared in the most express manner, that he will abrogate the Law of punishing children for the crimes of their parents. Jeremiah, speaking of this new dispensation, "In those days 66 they shall say no more, the fathers have eaten a sour grape, " and the children's teeth are set on edge. But every one shall "die for his own iniquity; every man that eateth the sour grape, "his teeth shall be set on edge. Behold the days come, saith "the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of "Israel and with the house of Judah: not according to the "covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I "took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt (which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband "unto them, saith the Lord:) But this shall be the covenant “that I will make with the house of Israel in those days; I will 66 put my Law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; "and will be their God, and they shall be my people." And Ezekiel, speaking of the same times, says, † "I will give them "one heart, and will put a new spirit within you; and I will "take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an "heart of flesh; that they may walk in my statutes and keep "mine ordinances: and they shall be my people, and I will be "their God. But as for them, whose heart walketh after the "heart of their detestable things, and their abominations, I will 66 recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord "God."

66

Thus in the Jewish system, a people of gross and carnal minds and short-sighted views, slow to believe any thing they could not themselves experience, and therefore almost incapable of being sufficiently influenced by the remote prospect of a future life, and the pure and spiritual blessedness of a celestial existence, were wisely and necessarily placed under a Law, which was supported by a visible extraordinary Providence, conferring immediate rewards and punishments on the person of the offender or laying hold of his most powerful instincts, by denouncing that his crimes would be visited upon his children and his children's children to the third and fourth generation: a proceeding which made a necessary part of that national discipline under which the Jews were placed, and which was free from all

* Jeremiah xxxi. 29-33. Compare Ezekiel, ch. xviii, the entire chapter. † Ezek. xi. 19-21.

shadow of injustice; because, when the innocent were afflicted for their parents crimes (as Warburton has well observed) it was by the deprivation of temporal benefits, in their nature forfeitable. Or should this not so clearly appear, yet we may be sure, God, who reserved to himself the right of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, would perfectly rectify any apparent inequality in the course of his providential government over the chosen people, in another and a better world; by repaying the innocent, who had necessarily suffered here, with an eternal and abundant recompense.

[ocr errors]

LECTURE IV.

A FUTURE STATE KNOWN TO THE JEWS.

SECT. I.-Doctrine of a future state, though it does not form the sanction of the Mosaic Law, is yet contained in the Writings of Moses.- Warburton's assertions on this subject hasty and inconsistent with each other— and with the Seventh Article of the Church of England-Future state intimated in the history of the creation and the fall—by the circumstances attending the death of Abel-by the translation of Enoch-by the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac-Future state must have been known to the Patriarchs, and influenced their conduct-attested in the Epistle to the Hebrews-instanced in the history of Jacob-of Moses—by our Lord's reply to the doubts of the Sadducees-the declaration of Balaam -Future state an object of popular belief among the Jews-from the laws relating to necromancers, &c.

HEBREWS, xi. 13.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were "persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth"

[ocr errors]

IN a former Lecture,* I have endeavoured to establish the first position I had laid down respecting the connexion that subsisted between the Mosaic Law and the belief of a future state of retribution; even that Moses did not sanction his Laws by the promise of future rewards and punishments; and to assign such reasons for this part of the divine economy, as the nature of the subject suggested. I now proceed to discuss the second conclusion, which an attentive perusal of the Old Testament appears to me to establish on this subject; even that the history recorded by the Jewish Lawgiver shows, that he himself believed a future state of retribution; and that it contains such proofs of it, as must naturally suggest it to every serious and reflecting mind, though with less clearness than the succeeding scriptures of the Old Testament, which exhibit this great truth with a perpetually increasing lustre, until by the Prophets it was so authoritatively revealed, as to become an article of popular belief and

*Part III. Lect. III. sect. i. supra.

« PrejšnjaNaprej »