[God has not relinquished the government of the earth : he orders and overrules every thing now as much as ever ; and in his former dispensations we behold a perfect exhibition of the government which he still administers. Still, as formerly, does he requite the wickedness of men ; sometimes on the offenders themselves, as when he smote Uzziah with leprosy*^; and sometimes on others ujion their account ; as when he slew seventy thousand of the people, to punish the sin which David had committed in nmnbering his subjects'^. Sometimes he in- flicts the judgment immediately , as on Herod who was eaten up with worms ^; and sometimes after a long season, as on the sons of Saul for their father's cruelty to the Gibeonites many years before '^. Sometimes his judgments are sent as a prelude to those heavier judgments that shall he inflicted in the eternal world, as in the case of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram^; and sometimes after the offenders themselves have heen forgiven, as was experienced by David in his family'^, and by Manasseh,
!> Lev. xxiv. 19, 20. ^ 2 Chron. xxvi. 19. <i 2 Sam.xxiv. 15, 17.
e Acts xii. 23. f 2 Sam.xxi. 1,(),9. k Numb.xvi.24 — 35.
^ 2 Sam. xii. 13, 14.
d2
whose iniquities were visited upon Israel after he himself had been received up to glory'. Sometimes his chastisements had 710 particular afflnity with the offence committed, as in the plagues of Egypt ; and sometimes the offence urns clearhj marked in the punishment ; as in the case of Joram, who had slain all his brothers, and whose children were all, with one exception, consigned to the slaughter^; and as David, whose wives and concubines were openly defiled by liis own son Ab- salom, just as he himself had defiled the wife of his faithful servant Uriahs So minutely is this correspondence marked in the Scriptures, that even the time and the place are noticed, as designed to manifest the very offence which God designed to punish ; as Israel's wandering in the wilderness forty years on account of their murmuring at the reports which were brought them by the spies who had searched out the land /or^?/ days^; and as Ahab's blood was licked up by dogs, on the very spot where dogs had licked the blood of Naboth, whom he had murdered".
We might further notice the correspondence between the spiritual judgments which God oftentimes inflicts for spiritual transgressions. Those who " will not hearken to his voice, he gives up to their otvn counsels";" those who abandon themselves to all manner of wickedness, he gives up to vile affections and a reprobate niind^; and those who "will 7iot receive his truth hi order to salvation, he gives up to their otvn delusions, that they may he damned^."
We have not prophets indeed at this time to declare the par- ticular instances in which God intends this righteous procedure of his to be discovered : but we have no reason to think that he has altered his system of government, and consequently no reason to doubt but that he still displays his own righteousness in his dispensations, as he has done in every age and quarter of tlie world. If any imagine that this conduct of his was con- fined to the nation whose temporal Governor he was, we must remind them, that he dealt precisely in the same way with the heathen nations'", and has taught us to expect that he will do so to the end of time ^]
Whereinsoever he fails to requite either good or evil in this life, he will requite it perfectly in the world to come —
[God inflicts some judgments here on account of sin, in
* 2 Kings xxiv. 2 — 4. ^ 2 Chron. xxi. 4, 17.
' 2 Sam. xii. 10 — 12. and xvi. 21, 22. ^ Numb. xiv. 33, 34.
" 1 Kings xxi. 19. and xxii. 38. « Ps. Ixxxi. 11, 12.