himself, where the Divine Providence was at length thoroughly cleared and justified before all the world, as it will be, no question, more generally cleared and justified at the final judgment. 3. That till this profane age, it has also, I think, been universally allowed by all sober men, that a command of God, when sufficiently made known to be so, is abundant authority for the taking away the life of any person whomsoever. doubt both ancient and modern princes, generals of armies, and judges, even those of the best reputation also, have ventured to take many men's lives away upon much less authority nor indeed do the most sceptical of the moderns care to deny this authority directly; they rather take a method of objecting somewhat more plausible, though it amount to much the same: they say, that the apparent disagreement of any command to the moral attributes of God, such as this of the slaughter of an only child seems plainly to be, will be a greater evidence that such a command does not come from God, than any pretended revelation can be that it does. But as to this matter, though the divine revelations have so long ceased, that we are not well acquainted with the manner of conveying such revelation with certainty to men, and by consequence, the apparent disagreement of a command with the moral attributes of God, ought at present, generally, if not constantly, to deter men from acting upon such a pretended revelation, yet was there no such uncertainty in the days of the old prophets of God, or of Abraham," the friend of God," who are ever found to have had an entire certainty of those their revelations and what evidently shows they were not deceived, is this, that the events and consequences of things afterwards always corresponded, and secured them of the truth of such divine revelations. Thus the first miraculous voice from heaven,† calling to Abraham not to execute this command, and the performance of those eminent promises made by the second voice,t on account of his obedience to that command, are demonstrations that Abraham's commission for what he did was truly divine, and an entire justification of his conduct in this matter. The words of the first voice from heaven will come hereafter to be set down in a fitter place, but the glorious promises made to Abraham's obedience by the second voice, must here be produced from verse 15, 16, 17, 18. "And the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself : Isaiah xli. 8. Gen. xxii. 11, 12. Gen. xxii. 17, 18. have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice." "Every one of which promises have been eminently fulfilled; and, what is chiefly remarkable, the last and principal of them, that in "Abraham's SEED all the nations of the earth should be blessed, was never promised till this time. It had been twice promised him, chap. xii. ver. 3, and xviii. 18, that" in himself should all the families of the earth be blessed;" but that this blessing was to belong to future times, and to be bestowed by the means of one of his late posterity, the Messias, that great seed and son of Abraham only, was never revealed before, but on such an amazing instance of his faith and obedience as was this his readiness to offer up his only begotten son Isaac, was now first promised, and has been long ago performed, in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of David, the son of Abraham,* which highly deserves our observation in this place: nor can we suppose that any thing else than clear conviction that this command came from God, could induce so good a man, and so tender a father as Abraham was, to sacrifice his own beloved son, and to lose thereby all the comfort he received from him at present, and all the expectation he had of a numerous and happy pos terity from him hereafter. 4. That long before the days of Abraham, the demons or heathen gods had required and received human sacrifices, and particularly that of the offerer's own children, and this both before and after the deluge. This practice had been indeed so long left off in Egypt, and the custom of sacrificing animals there was confined to so few kinds in the days of Herodotus, that he would not believe they had ever offered human sacrifices at all: for he says, That the fable, "as if Hercules was sacrificed to Jupiter in Egypt, was feigned by the Greeks, who were entirely unacquainted with the nature of the Egyptians and their laws; for how should they sacrifice men with whom it is unlawful to sacrifice any brute beast? (boars, and bulls, and pure calves, and ganders, only excepted.") However, it is evident from Sanchoniatho, Ma netho, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, Philo, Plutarch, and Por◄ Matth. i. 1. † Ap. Marsh, Chron, p. 303. phyry, that such sacrifices were frequent both in Phoenicia and Egypt, and that long before the days of Abraham, as Sir John Marsham and Bishop Cumberland have fully proved; nay, that in other places, (though not in Egypt,) this cruel practice continued long after Abraham, and this till the very third, if not also to the fifth century of Christianity, before it was quite abolished. Take the words of the original authors in English, as most of them occur in their originals in Sir John Marsham's Chronicon, p. 76-78, 300-304 "Cronus, offered up his only begotten son, as a burntoffering, to his father Ouranus, when there was a famine and a pestilence.' 66 Cronus, whom the Phoenicians name Israel, (it should be I1,] and who was after his death consecrated into the star Saturn, when he was king of the country, and had by a nymph of that country, named Anobret, an only begotten son, whom, on that account, they called Jeud, (the Phoenicians to this day calling an only begotten son by that name,) he in his dread of very great dangers that lay upon the country from war, adorned his son with royal apparel, and built an altar, and offered him in sacrifice. "The Phoenicians, when they were in great dangers by war, by famine, or by pestilence, sacrificed to Saturn one of the dearest of their people, whom they chose by public suffrage for that purpose: and Sanchoniatho's Phoenician history is full of such sacrifices. [These hitherto I take to have been before the flood."] "In Arabia, the Dumatii sacrificed a child every year."§ "They relate, that of old, the [Egyptian] kings sacrificed such men as were of the same colour with Typho, at the se pulchre of Osiris.'|| "Manetho relates, T that they burnt Typhonean men alive in the city Iditbyia, [or Ilithya,] and scattered their ashes like chaff that is winnowed; and this was done publicly, and at a set season, in the dog-days.' "The barbarous nations** did a long time admit of the slaughter of children, as of a holy practice, and acceptable to the gods. And this thing both private persons, and kings, and entire nations, practise at proper seasons. "The human sacrifices that were enjoined by the Dodonean oracle,tt mentioned in Pausanias' Achaics, in the Philo. Bib. ex Sanchon. p. 76. Porphyry, p. 77. Porphyry, p. 77. || Diod. p. 78. Plutarch, p. 78. **Nounulli ap. Philon, p. 17. tt Cumberl Sachon. w. 378, tragical story of Croesus and Callirrhoe, sufficiently intimate that the Phoenician and Egyptian priests had set up this Dodonean oracle before the time of Amosis, who destroyed that barbarous practice in Egypt." -Isque adytis hæc tristia dicta reportat, -He from the gods this dreadful answer brought, And Grecian blood once more atone the main. DRYDEN. These bloody sacrifices were, for certain, instances of the greatest degree of impiety, tyranny, and cruelty, in the world, that either wicked demons, or wicked men, who neither made nor preserved mankind, who had therefore no right over them, nor were they able to make them amends in the next world for what they thus lost or suffered in this, should, after so inhuman a manner, command the taking away the lives of men, and particularly of the offerers' own children, without the commission of any crime. This was, I think, an abomination derived from him who was a “murderer from the beginning;"† a crime truly and properły diabolical. 5. That, accordingly, Almighty God himself, under the Jewish dispensation, vehemently condemned the Pagans, and sometimes the Jews themselves, for this crime; and for this, among other heinous sins, cast the idolatrous nations (nay, sometimes the Jews too,) out of Palestine. Take the principal texts hereto relating, as they lie in order in the Old Testament. "Thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech.-Defile not yourselves in any of these things, for in all these the nations are defiled, which I cast out before you." "Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed Virg. Æneid. B. ii. ver. 115. Lev. xviii. 21-24. unto Molech, he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones."* "Take heed to thyself, that thou be not snared by following the nations, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou inquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods ? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the Lord thy God; for every abomination of the Lord, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters have they burnt in the fire to their gods.". Deut. xii. 30, 31. and xviii. 10. 2 Kings xvii. 17. "And Ahaz made his son to pass through the fire, according to the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out from before the children of Israel."t 66 Moreover, Ahaz burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children [his son in Josephus] in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel."‡ "And the Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adrammelech, and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim," &c.§ "Ánd Josiah defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech." "Yea they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto demons; and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood." See Isaiah lvii. 5. "The children of Judah have done evil in my sight, saith the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to pollute it and they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I commanded them not, nor came it into my heart."** "Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle, because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burnt incense unto other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place Lev. xx. 2. 2 Chron. xxviii. 3. 2 Kings xxiii. 10. Psalm cvi. 37, 38. ** Jer. vii. 30, 31. |