, after
wandering forty years in the wilderness, should mix themselves up with the
Heathens, and adopt their morals and principles. He desired that they
should continue a distinct and holy people, that strangers should be
extirpated, and their country be possessed by Jews alone. Their bounds
were marked out by God himself, and extended from Lebanon and the
Euphrates to the sea; and he commanded them to keep his commandments in
the land which he had bestowed upon them, so that he alone should be their
Lord. Hereupon, as I have before observed, Moses delivered such laws as
were adapted to their situation. But these wanderers of the desert adhered
not to the law delivered to them. We find even during the life of Moses
much obstinacy, and an unbridled inclination to Heathenism was manifested,
by their making objects of idolatrous worship. After the death of Moses,
the seventy-two interpreters collected his doctrines; but they added to
them some, withdrew others, and confused several, by which the pure Mosaic
opinions must have been obscured. And we read accordingly, in the tenth
chapter of Judges, "that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of
the Lord." They served Baal and Ashtaroth, the deities of the Syrians and
Moabites, and even the gods of the Philistines, whom God had commanded
they should not serve.[6] Their hearts became hardened in their apostacy.
The siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnazar, and the captivity in Babylon, had
the most corrupting influence on the purity of the Mosaic doctrines, and
on the laws. The original writings discovered by Hilkiah, were retrenched,
added to, and the order of the events displaced. From the long residence
amongst, and a great intercourse with strange people, all the frightful
prejudices, all the fanciful dreams of our rabbins, were introduced into
the sacred books. We learn from the second book of Chronicles, chap.
xxxvi. verse 17, "that the king slew the young men with the sword in the
house of the sanctuary, and had no compassion upon young man or maiden,
old man or him that stooped for age. And all the vessels of gold, and the
treasures of the house of the Lord, and of the king and all the princes,
these he brought all to Babylon; and they burnt the house of God, and
brake down the walls of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with
fire."

[6] The greater part of the kings, both of Israel and of Judah,
served strange gods. Under Josiah, as he cleared o