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ftroy all their male children. In fuch a cafe what must the poor parents feel! Add to this, that the lives, of even venerable elders, were made bitter with the most fervile labour, and unrelenting ftripes. Yet there was no pity, no relenting; cries and tears found no redrefs; the tyrant difdains the name of the tremendous God, crying out, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice, to let Ifrael go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Ifrael go. *

3. WE may be very fure that the violence and cruelty of Canaan, was risen to an enormous pitch, when the Lord was determined to root them out of the land of the living. It feems, from them, the Ifraelites learned the horrible custom of facrificing their children unto Devils, fo that they loft all natural affection, and the land was polluted with blood. ↑ Likewife, in what manner they treated their captives, we may learn from the cafe of Adonibezek, when he was taken they cut off his thumbs, and his great toes, then he declared it was a juft retaliation; for that he had served threefcore and ten Kings in like manner. †

4. ANOTHER inhuman monfter, in the fhape of a man, would accept no other capitulation than that of thrusting out the right eyes of the people, whom he fuppofed to lie at his mercy. § And how feelingly are the cruelties defcribed, which the Babylonians exercised

* Exod. v. 2. † Pfal. cv. 38. Judges i. 7. 1 Sam. xi. 2.

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exercifed upon the Ifraelites. They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah. Princes were hanged up by their hand: the faces of the honourable were not honoured. They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. The elders have ceafed from the gate, and the young men from their mufick *. All this was amply repaid them when the Medes and Perfians conquered the Babylonians, and was foretold by the Prophet. Every one that is found, fhall be thrust through; and every one that is joined to them, shall fall by the fword. Their children alfo fhall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished. Behold, I will ftir up the Medes against them, which fhall not regard filver; and gold they shall not delight in it. Their bows alfo fhall dafb the young men to pieces; and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb; their eye fshall not spare children †. Thus we find the prediction in the Pfalms awfully verified : O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy fhall he be that rewardeth thee as thou haft ferved us. Happy fhall he be that taketh and dafheth thy little ones against the ftones .

5. THESE furious conquerors had but their feafon, and they, in their turn, were obliged to yield to the Grecian oppreffors. As the filver arms and breast of the Medes and Perfians had caft to the ground the golden head (the Babylonians) fo the brass thighs, namely,

# Lam. v. II—15.
‡ Pfal. cxxxvii. 8, 9.

† Ifa. xiii. 15---19.

namely, Alexander and his fucceffors, destroyed and oppreffed the Medes and Perfians; infomuch, that their power and tyranny.was but of fhort duration *.

6. THE Perfian dominion is reprefented under the fymbol of a ram acting with great power and tyranny, and the Grecian under the emblem of an he-goat; and the Prophet fays, I faw him come clofe unto the ram, and he was moved with choler against him, and fmote the ram, and brake his two horns: and there was no power in the ram to ftand before him, but he caft him down to the ground, and ftamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand ↑. But even this oppreffor had but his time, tho' much cruelty was transacted during that space, and especially against the Saints of God; infomuch, that he is faid to caft fome of the Saints down, and to magnify himself against the Prince of the host of heaven, and to caft fome of the hoft down and stamped upon them ‡

7. BUT the iron legs, namely, the Romans, come on in their turn, and they fubdue the brass thighs, and wholly prevailed in their day-carrying destruction and terror wherever they came. Thefe are what are ufually called the Four Grand Monarchies, because so diftinctly spoken of in Scripture, and because, in their turn, they bore a kind of universal sway, and carried terror and deftruction wherever they came. And the history here referred to, is only their conquests over each other; whereas millions were flain of other nations,

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* Dan. ii.

↑ Dan. viii. '7.

Ver. 10.

nations, in different wars; as the Babylonians with the Affyrians, Edomites, the Moabites, Ethiopians, &c. The Perfians with the Egyptians-the Greeks with the Indians-the Romans with the Carthaginians-the Gauls, the Germans, and almoft innumerable other nations, with whom they were in continual wars; infomuch, that Julius Cæfar alone is faid to have fought fifty pitched battles, and supposed, at a moderate computation, to have been the death of one million (as I understand it) of foldiers; and what numbers befides must have perished, through the facking and burning, pillaging of towns and cities! befides the multitudes who would unavoidably perifh through the brutal violence of foldiers, men inured to blood, and hardened in cruelty !

8. Now war is fure to draw after it the most pitiable fcenes of calamities of various kinds. The fetting the fword of deftruction against each other, kindling wrath and rage, the very image of Hell itself;-how many, in such cases, are hurried into captivity, fometimes in the most deplorable condition? their limbs lopped off, their eyes pulled out, and otherwise shockingly maimed, and, in that most piteous plight, condemned to the most servile labour, with many aggravating circumftances !-No diftinction is made between the delicate and the hardy; they who have been brought up in affluence, and they who have been accustomed to want. O, no; they who have been brought up in scarlet, embrace dunghills—their vifage

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is blacker than a coal-their skin cleaveth to their bones: it is withered, it is become like a ftick*. What unknown anguish muft fuch hopeless mortals feel! Torn from all that is near unto them, from every friendly countenance, from every relation; nothing but the furious looks, reproaches, or stripes of the oppreffor, or his more cruel tools of barbarity. In defcribing fuch a fituation, one may almost adopt the Poet's awful Defcription of Hell: —

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Regions of forrow! doleful fhades! "Where peace and reft can never dwell; "Hope never comes that comes to all, "But torture without end fill urges."

Nay, to fuch a degree of pride and fupercilious haughtinefs have fome of those fiends in human shape been hurried, that they have made their flaves and captives drawtheir triumphal chariots; and fome have carried their insufferable arrogance fo far, as tofubject their captive kings to this horrid abasement †.

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Such was the ambition of Sefofteris, King of Egyyt, yet ob ferving one of the four kings, who were drawing his chariot, to look behind at the wheels as they turned round, he asked him why he looked fo attentively at the wheels? The captive prince answered, the wheels reminded him of the amazing turnings and revolutions which happened to mankind;-the spoke in the wheel, which was now uppermoft, would foon be the loweft: and fo it was with men. He that was on a throne to-day, might be in the most servile condition to-morrow. The remark is faid to have affected Sefofteris in fuch a manner, that he releafed the captive kings from their fhameful bondage immediately.

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