in delineating it ; and a full consideration of it is necessary, in order to the obtaining of a right under- standing of our text. We propose then, from a view of our text as connected with the whole chapter, to set before you, I. The extent of man's wickedness —
We will give, in the first place, a brief summary of the chapter —
[It is here supposed that a child, from the moment of its birth, is left exposed in an open field, without any one to pay the least attention to it ; and that in that situation, where it must speedily have perished, it is noticed by Jehovah, who instantly administers to all its wants, and thus preserves its life. It is then supposed, that, after this child has been brought up by him to a mature age, she is espoused to him and becomes his wife. He, in the character of her husband, loads her with benefits, so as to make her the admiration and the envy of all who behold her. She however, instead of requiting him with that love, and honour, and fidelity that become her, abandons herself to open prostitution, and that too, not through the solicitations of others, but through the wilful depravity of her own heart; she herself being the tempter of all her paramours, and bestowing on them the gifts which her husband had conferred on her. By this licentious and infamous conduct she has compelled her husband to put her away, and to withdraw from her the means of exciting and compensating any more these iniquitous proceedings.]
Let us now mark how this image was applicable to Judah and Jerusalem —
[The Jews had been originally chosen in Abraham, their common father, when he himself was an idolater : and as soon as his posterity were multiplied in Egypt, they were reduced to such a state of destitution and misery, that they must have perished, if God himself had not miraculously interposed for them. But God had compassion on them, and brought them out with a high hand, and took them for his own peculiar people, and gave them an inheritance in the land of Canaan. There he elevated them to a high rank among the nations, insomuch that they were the envy arid admiration of all who knew them ; so great was their power, their opulence, their prosperity in every respect. But in time they turned from the worship of God to idols, and from confidence in God to a de- pendence on foreign alliances, which they sought and main- tained at vast expense. " Thy renown," says the prophet, (ver. 14, 15.) " went forth among the heathen for thy beauty ; for it