One reason why you may not, probably, perceive the full weight of what I am saying, is, that we do not at this day understand, or think much concerning the sin of idolatry, or the necessity or importance of God's delivering a specific, a solemn, a terrifying sentence against it. The sin itself hath in a manner ceased from among us: other sins, God knows, have come in its place; but this, in a great measure, is withdrawn from our observation: whereas in the age of the world, and among those people, when and to whom the ten commandments were promulged, false worship, or the worship of false gods, was the sin which lay at the root and foundation of every other. The worship of the one true God, in opposition to the vain and false, and wicked religions which had then obtained amongst mankind, was the grand point to be inculcated. It was the contest then carried on: and the then world, as well as future ages, were deeply. interested in it. History testifies, experience testifies, that there cannot be true morality, or true virtue, where there is

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false religion, false worship, false gods: for which reason you find, that this great article (for such it then was) was not only made the subject of a command, but placed at the head of all the rest. Nay, more ; from the whole strain and tenour of the Old Testament, there is good reason to believe, that the maintaining in the world the knowledge and worship of the one true God, holy, just, and good, in contradiction to the idolatrous worship which prevailed, was the great and principal scheme and end of the Jewish polity and most singular constitution. As the Jewish nation, therefore, was to be the depository of, and the means of preserving iu the world, the knowledge and worship of the one true God, when it was lost and darkened in other countries, it became of the last importance to the execution of this purpose, that this nation should be warned and deterred, by every moral means, from sliding themselves into those practices, those errors, and that crime, against which it was the. very design of their institution that they should strive and contend...

The form of expression used in the second commandment, and in this very part of it, much favours the interpretation for which I argue, namely, that the sentence or threatening was aimed against the sin of idolatry alone. The words are," For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the fathers upon the children." These two things of being jealous, and of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children, are spoken of God in conjunction; and in such a manner, as to show, that they refer to one subject. Now jealousy implies a rival. God's being -jealous means, that he would not allow any other god to share with himself in the worship of his creatures: that is what is imported in the word jealous; and, therefore, that is the subject to which the threat of visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children is applied. According to this interpretation, the following expressions of the commandment, "them that hate me, and them that love me," signify them that forsake and desert my worship and religion, for the worship and religion of other gods,

and them who adhere firmly and faithfully to my worship, in opposition to every other worship.

My second proposition is, that the threat relates to temporal, or more properly speaking, to family prosperity and adversity. In the history of the Jews, most particularly of their kings, of whom, as was to be expected, we read and know the most, we meet with repeated instances of this same threat being both pronounced and executed against their family prosperity: and for this very same cause, their desertion of the true God, and going over, after the example of the nations around them, to the worship of false gods. Amongst various other instances, one is very memorable and very direct to our present argument and that is the instance of Ahab, who of all the idolatrous kings of Israel, was the worst. The punishment threatened and denounced against his crime was this: "Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will take away thy posterity, and will make thine house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha,

the son of Ahijah, for the provocation wherewith thou hast provoked me to anger, and made Israel to sin." The provocation, you will observe, was the introduction of false gods into his kingdom; and the prophet here not only threatens Ahab with the ruin and destruction of his family, as the punishment of his sin, but points out to him two instances of great families having been destroyed for the very same reason. You afterwards read the full accomplishment of this sentence by the hand of Jehu. Now I consider these instances as, in fact, the execution of the second commandment, and as showing what sense that commandment bore. But if it were so; if the force of the threat was, that in the distribution and assignment of temporal prosperity and adversity, upon a man's family and to a man's race, respect would be had to his fidelity to God, or his rebellion against him in this article of false and idølatrous worship; then is the punishment, as to the nature and justice of it, agreeable to what, we see in the constant and ordinary course of God's providence. The wealth and grandeur, of families are com