that rank of life some that could understand, and were not backward to tell him his faults.

Ver. 13. "And his servants came near, and spake unto him, and said; My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith unto thee, wash and be clean ?"

His instantaneous recovery from so loathsome a distemper, which followed from the use of the means prescribed to him by the prophet, brought him at once to sober and serious thought, and to the acknowledgement of that Being, the one only living and true God, to whose goodness he had been indebted for his cure, and whose prophet had been the instrument of it.

Ver. 15. And he breaks out; "Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel." His pious reverence and gratitude would be the more awakened and confirmed by the disinterested behaviour of Elisha, in refusing his great gifts which he offered to him.

This would teach him, that the favour of God was not to be purchased by money; that his true servants were above its mean influence,

ence, and actuated by higher motives. Whereas among the heathens, nothing was to be obtained without rich presents to their priests; and whatever crimes they had committed, money could make their gods propitious to them. Recovered from a state of such deplorable ignorance, and deeply impressed with a sense of the power, majesty, and goodness, of the divine Being, who only was known and adored among the Israelites in all the earth, who alone could hear and help his creatures, he immediately formed a fixed resolution to worship Jehovah alone; but is desirous to lay before Elisha one part of his conduct in this respect, and to have his opinion upon it, as a prophet and interpreter of the divine will: "In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon; when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing. And he said unto him, Go in peace.

I.

We shall first inquire how far Naaman's re

quest

quest was just and laudable, and what degree of approbation the prophet gave to it.

It is to be observed, that some scholars of great eminence and worth, have thought that Naaman's words might be understood of his begging pardon only for his past idolatry, and not to have any reference to any thing in future.

But though it is quite improbable that he should desire forgiveness for such a trifling instance of his past idolatry, amidst many more grievous that he must have committed; it serves to show the sentiments and conscientious minds of these excellent persons, that they thought the prophet could not give a sanction to Naaman's joining in the worship of the idol in the manner he requested, without incurring the charge of encouraging prevarication and insincerity in the things of God.

It is plain that the Syrian general, by his manner of stating his difficulty, was far from thinking himself quite right in the practice he proposed, to continue in the idolatrous temple of Rimmon, in bowing to the idol and worshiping it, after he had declared himself most fully resolved to worship Jehovah alone.

For

For he might reasonably entertain some doubt and suspicion, whether his excuses for it would sufficiently justify him; that he did it only in compliance with the duties of his office in attending upon his prince, and intended nothing more by it; and that, although he bowed his body to the false god, in his heart he should bow to and worship the God of Israel, and no other.

And it might affect him, that notwithstanding these pleas, his action would be construed by others into an approbation of the idol-worship, or else his sincerity be called in question by those who happened to be acquainted with his real sentiments.

Those who maintain that the prophet, in his answer, gave his full consent to, and allowance of, Naaman's bowing to the idol, as containing nothing sinful in it, under his circumstances, generally defend it by this consideration; that the severe laws of Almighty God by Moses against idolatry, were given to the Israelites only, but that the heathen nations. were not bound to the observance of them.

It might be difficult, perhaps, to prove any such exemption from the scriptures, where all idolatry is so absolutely forbidden. However,

1

try, though not in such a way as he could entirely approve or commend.

II.

Thus, as it seems to me, may this servant of God be cleared from the accusation sometimes brought against him, of giving permission to practise idolatry; or, on the other hand, of countenancing dissimulation in the worship of God.

However, what a heathen Naaman did, or was permitted to do, in the worship of the divine Being, if he was permitted, can be nothing to a christian, who is under a rule of his own, and, in a peculiar sense, subject to God, as was his people Israel before the coming of Christ.

The fact and state of things, with respect to God's true worship, seems to be this:

When men were become dark and corrupt in their practice, and had thence been led to make to themselves false objects of worship suited to their depraved minds, the Almighty seems to have designed to bring them back gradually to the acknowledgement of his being and perfections, and the worship due to

him

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