bands of the Chaldeans, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the children of Amnion, and sent them against Judah to destroy it. Surely at the command- ment of the Lord came this upon Judah, to remove them out of his sight1:" so entirely are men, even when following most freely the dictates of their own minds, unconscious agents of the Deity, to execute his will ; " the sword in his hand, and the staff of his indignation"1."]
3. Penal —
[Sometimes God is pleased to send trials in a way of pa- ternal chastisement, as when he stirred up enemies to disturb the peace and quietness of Solomon's reign". And he has told us, that he will deal thus with his children in every age, " visit- ing their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes, even when it is not his intention utterly to take away his loving-kindness from them0." But sometimes he executes his judgments upon men in a way of righteous retribution. Go to Sodom ; and behold the cities of the plain ; and tell me, whose hand was there? See Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, with all their families, swallowed up in the earth at the word of Moses; and say by whom was that judgment wrought? Or tell me by whose hand Ananias and Sapphira fell, for lying to the Holy Ghost ? Was there any one of these evils which the Lord did not inflict and execute ?]
Methinks, I have spoken enough for the confirma- tion of this truth ; and may proceed, II. To shew how it is carried into effect —
God is pleased to work in a great variety of ways : for instance,
1. By a visible display of his own Almighty power —
[It was thus that he caused the sea to divide its waves, and to leave a dry path for the children of Israel ; and pre- sently afterwards to close again, and overwhelm every indivi- dual of the hostile army that pursued them. By a similar display of his power, he opened a passage also for his people through the river Jordan, at a time when it had overflowed its banks. Afterwards, in like manner, he caused the walls of Jericho to fall down, at the sound of rams' horns. In such instances as these, no means were used that had the slightest tendency to effect the end ; that so his own interposition might be the more manifest, and that he might have all the glory.]
2. By the instrumentality of second causes —
I 2 Kings xxiv. 2, 3. m Isai. x. 5 — 7.
II 1 Kings xi. 14, 23. ° Ps. lxxxix. 30—33. Heb. xii. 6.