life, that when providence is pleased to humiliate or destroy a kingdom or people hardened in fin, a certain blindness or fatality seems to attend them in all that they do; which hinders them from feeing their true intereft, and the means by which it may be fecured. To thofe who look on from a dif tance, and to fome few perhaps in the devoted state, the approach of danger and the way of escape may be clearly difcernible; but the great body of the nation, and those to whofe care its welfare is entrusted, perceive not their fituation, till retreat is impoffible and ruin inevitable; or elfe by the very meafures adopted to avoid it, do but rush more precipitately into the jaws of death and the pit of deftruction.

If this obfervation is well founded, and the page of history in various ages fhews its truth; never, without doubt, fince kingdoms have fubfifted on the face of the earth, was it more deplorably and ftrikingly verified, than in the final fubverfion of the Jewish polity civil and religious. In the wonderful account, which the hiftorian has faithfully and feelingly recorded, as, on the one hand, you discover at every step and turn, that the wrath of heaven is upon this people; fo, on

the

the other, you behold, with filent astonishment, the almoft incredible infatuation which has feised upon all ranks, the ruler and the judge, the prudent and the ancient, the man of war and the honourable counsellor; how infenfible they are of their alarming fituation, when all nature feems to be armed against them, and confpires with the enemy to involve their country in one common overthrow and general devastation.

But amazing and unparalleled as the cafe really is, it could not be otherwife; for prophecy had foretold that fo it fhould be. He who gave them laws and founded their state, fet before them at once the bleffings which they should reap, while they diligently walked

in the commandments of their GOD; and the curfes which fhould follow them, when they did not hearken to him, nor obey his voice. "The Lord," fays he, "shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart"." And what Mofes thus predicted, the Son of GoD confirmed; and at his last and folemn approach to Jerufalem, teftified publicly with tears of compaffion, that the things of her peace were now hidden from her eyes.

a Deut. xxviii. 28.

As

As a nation, their blindness was already begun, when they rejected the meffage of peace and falvation, which the Beloved of the Father brought down from heaven, and implored them to accept; and those who cast away from them the word of life and terms of reconciliation, which still by his meffengers for almost forty years he held out unto them, no balm of Gilead, no difcipline or remedy beneath the fun, could heal of their blindness. Experience and disappointment, which teach others wifdom, ferved only to heighten their pride, and augment their misery; and where one calamity ended, another began.

Their Meffiah and King they nailed to the cross, left the Romans fhould take away their place and nation: His death was the cause of their complicated fufferings and final de-. ftruction d. The wonderful works, which the Son of God daily performed in their fight, they would not believe: by those who did no miracles, nor made good one of their John xi. 48.

b B. J. L. III. c. viii. §. 6.

Thus the prophecy was fulfilled: "I alfo will choose their delufions, and will bring their fears upon them." If lxvi. 4.

boaftful

boastful promises, they were repeatedly and fatally deluded.

If the found of war was heard in their gates, and their enemies, in all lands, feemed refolved to extirpate the very name of Jews; ftill they flattered themselves with the brighteft expectations; ftill they trusted, a king should rife among them, under whose victorious banner they should trample on the necks of all that hated them, and obtain a kingdom of boundless extent, and perpetual fplendor.

When the folid earth and the troubled sky gave figns of woe; these portended confufion to their foes, and to themselves deliverance. When their feftivals were marked with aggravated diftrefs, as well as aggravated guilt; when the fword of the affaffin murdered his brother, and the house of GOD was the scene of flaughter; they nevertheless were a holy people, the favourites of heaven, and the GOD of Ifrael would make bare his arm in their cause.

When the enemy, inftead of feifing the victory which was within his grasp, on a fudden broke up from before their city, that the Lord's prisoners might come forth in fafety, and the wicked even yet might have

space

fpace to repent; this was the interpofition of providence in their favour, a certain prelude to future fuccefs, and they who had once fled, fhould for ever flee before them.

Thus did they grope, and thus did they ftumble, when the light fhone around them, in the morning of their calamities, which we have already furveyed; nor did they roufe from their flumber, nor once lift up their eyes to the hand that fmote them, till the day declined, and their fun fet upon them in the darkness and horror which we now are to contemplate, when we fhall have confidered one circumftance, that requires our previous attention.

It was foretold that the vengeance, great in the extreme, fhould be fwift in execution. Except those days fhould be fhortened," faid our Lord, "there fhould no flesh be faved; but for the elect's fake those days fhall be shortened "."

That by the Elect here we are to underftand the Chriftians, there can be no doubt; and as the word is not limited, in itself or

• Matt. xxiv, 22.

the