22.  In Deuteronomy, Moses makes a recapitulation of the foregoing history, with zealous exhortations to the people, faithfully to worship and obey that God who had worked such amazing wonders for them:  he promises them the noblest temporal blessings, if they prove obedient, and adds the most awful and striking denunciations against them, if they rebel, or forsake the true God.

23.  I have before observed, that the sanctions of the Mosaic law, were temporal rewards and punishments; those of the New Testament are eternal.  These last, as they are so infinitely more forcible than the first, were reserved for the last, best gift to mankind—­and were revealed by the Messiah, in the fullest and clearest manner.  Moses, in this book, directs the method in which the Israelites were to deal with the seven nations, whom they were appointed to punish for their profligacy and idolatry; and whose land they were to possess, when they had driven out the old inhabitants.  He gives them excellent laws, civil as well as religious, which were after the standing municipal laws of that people.  This book concludes with Moses’ song and death.

Of Joshua.

24.  The book of Joshua contains the conquests of the Israelites over the seven nations, and their establishment in the promised land.  Their treatment of these conquered nations must appear to you very cruel and unjust, if you consider it as their own act, unauthorised by a positive command; but they had the most absolute injunctions not to spare these corrupt people—­“to make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy to them, but utterly to destroy them:”—­and the reason is given, “lest they should turn away the Israelites from following the Lord, that they might serve other gods.”  The children of Israel are to be considered as instruments in the hand of the Lord, to punish those whose idolatry and wickedness had deservedly brought destruction on them:  this example, therefore, cannot be pleaded in behalf of cruelty, or bring any imputation on the character of the Jews.

25.  With regard to other cities, which did not belong to these seven nations, they were directed to deal with them, according to the common law of arms at that time.  If the city submitted, it became tributary, and the people were spared; if it resisted, the men were to be slain, but the women and children saved.

26.  Yet, though the crime of cruelty cannot be justly laid to their charge on this occasion, you will observe in the course of their history, many things recorded of them very different from what you would expect from the chosen people of God, if you supposed them selected on account of their own merit; their national character was by no means amiable; and we are repeatedly told, that they were not chosen for their superior righteousness—­“for they were a stiff-necked people, and provoked the Lord with their rebellions from the day they left Egypt.”—­“You have been rebellious against the Lord (says Moses) from the day that I knew you.”  And he vehemently exhorts them, not to flatter themselves that their success was, in any degree, owing to their own merits.