inculcate the principles of their religion, and to possess their fellow captives with a sincere aversion to idolatry. There, as their former preachers had foretold, being allured into a wilderness, and surrounded with a hedge of thorns, so that they could not return home, God hewed them by his prophets, and slew them by the words of his mouth; there he spoke home to their hearts, took away the names of Baalim out of their mouths, and taught them once more to call him Ishi, the being to whom they were in contract for obedience. To the success of preaching, and not to the smart of affliction, are we to attribute the remarkable reconversion of the Jews to the belief and worship of one God, a conversion that remains to this day. The Jews have since fallen into horrid crimes; but they have never since this period lapsed into idolatry.

mence.

The prophet Ezekiel was a man extraordinarily appointed to preach to the captives, and endowed with singular abilities for the execution of his office. He received his instructions in extacies, and he uttered them generally in rapturous veheHe had a pleasant voice, and the entire management of it; he could play well on the instrument, that is, he knew how to dispose his organs of speech so as to give energy by giving proper tone and accent to all he spoke. The people were as much charmed with his discourses as if they been odes set to musick; he was a lovely song in their ears, and they used to say to one another, come, and let us hear what is the word, that cometh forth from the Lord. The elders and the

people assembled at his house, and sat before him, and there, sometimes in the morning, and at other times in the evening, he delivered those sharp and pointed sermons, which are contained in his prophecy. One while he preached by signs, as the former prophets had done, another while he smote with his hand, and stamped with his foot, when he addressed them, trembling at their depravities, and weeping over their calamities. His writings contain the doctrines, which he taught; and the manner, in which he delivered them, is in all probability a pattern of the method employed by all the other preachers during the captivity.

It should seem, after the Jews had rejected the true prophets, they were punished with multitudes of publick preachers, pretending to a spirit of prophecy. These pests of society had art and address enough to insinuate themselves into favour, and to obtain popularity. They swarmed every where, and became the heaviest curse, that was ever inflicted on a guilty world. The prophets held them in the utmost abhorrence, and a great part of their ministry was addressed to unmask them. They described them by every adious image they could invent, and they pointed out in the clearest manner the dreadful consequences of their detestable hypocrisy.

These men were the mere creatures of those abandoned tyrants, who usurped the crown, and they were set up to assist their profligate creators in despoiling the people of their liberty and God of his glory. Religion was made an engine of state,

and these hirelings were appointed to work it. Jeroboam, the first manufacturer of these detested tools, made them of the national filth; he in mere policy, took the basest and most depraved and unprincipled of the nation, and ordained them ministers of that motley religion, which he had set up to prevent the return of the ten tribes to the family of David. The king of Assyria, with views exactly similar, allowed the captives to perpetuate this vile race, and we find them in Babyion, described and execrated by Ezekiel.

The success of these bad men is chiefly to be ascribed to these four causes. First: they pretended a divine right, and said, the Lord saith so and so. They were too artful to profess the truth; that would have been, the king saith so and so, the lying spirit of the devil sent us to preach thus and thus but here was a pretended reverence of God, and an acknowledgment of his authority. Secondly: they affected to imitate the true prophets, ill they had obtained the popular plaudit, then they dropped them into obscurity, and sunk them into disgrace, and at last they turned the general odium over them, because they continued inflexibly upright, and could not be brought to mimick their betrayers. Thirdly: they framed their doctrine and deportment, not by the nature of God, and the dictates of his written word; but, on the contrary, by the prevailing passions of the bulk of their auditors. Their study was to please, and they said and did whatever they thought would an

Q

swer that end. Fourthly: they were the constant companions of their admirers, and went with them into the perpetration of every crime. The true prophets were irksome or insipid to bad men; but these, these were chaplains exactly suited to their patrons; they could fast with Ahab, and feast with Jezebel.

According to those, who had the best opportunities of knowing them, their qualifications were mean and their dispositions wicked. Hence they are called blind, ignorant, dumb dogs, that could not bark; greedy dogs, for their avarice, every one looking for his gain from his quarter ;-sleeping dogs, for their indolence;-drunkards, saying, fetch wine, we will fill ourselves with strong drink, to-morrow shall be as to-day, and much more abundant; persecutors when in prosperity, and cowards in adversity;-dogmatical cavillers about learning and religion, while they were destitute of decency, civility, and common sense;-unprincipled wretches, who, though they would not shut a door in the temple, or kindle a fire on the altar of God, their creator for nought, would protect, applaud, and canonize the greatest criminals for a handful of barley, and doom millions to destruction for a piece of bread!

When the seventy years of the captivity were expired, the captives were divided in their opinion about returning. Some traded and flourished in 'Babylon, and, having no faith in the divine promise, and too much confidence in their sordid guides, chose to live where idolatry was the estab

lished religion, and despotism the soul of government. The good prophets and preachers, Zerubbabel, Joshua, Haggai, and others, having confidence in the word of God, and aspiring after their natural, civil, and religious rights, endeavoured by all means to extricate themselves and their countrymen from that mortifying state, into which the crimes of their ancestors had brought them. They wept, fasted, prayed, preached, prophesied, and at length prevailed. The chief instruments were Nehemiah and Ezra ; the first was governor, and reformed their civil state, the last was a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, and addressed himself to ecclesiastical matters, in which he rendered the noblest service to his country, and to all posterity.

Ever since Moses had committed the revelations of God to writing, and had commanded the book to be transcribed, a great number of ingenious men, of several tribes, had taken up the profession of writing, and were called scribes. The five sacred books of Moses contained the genealogies of all the families of the nation, the body of jurisprudence that directed all their courts of law, the whole ritual of the church, and many other articles of necessary and daily use. The prophets since Moses had added to the inspired code, and by so doing had both increased knowledge, and the necessity of numberless scribes to diffuse it. The men, who thus employed themselves in transcri