o contemplate in retirement
the mercy of his Creator to himself or to others, but to wait, with
malignant impatience, the destruction of Nineveh. It came to pass,
however, as the story relates, that the Ninevites reformed, and that
God, according to the Bible phrase, repented him of the evil he had said
he would do unto them, and did it not. This, saith the first verse of
the last chapter, displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was very angry.
His obdurate heart would rather that all Nineveh should be destroyed,
and every soul, young and old, perish in its ruins, than that his
prediction should not be fulfilled. To expose the character of a prophet
still more, a gourd is made to grow up in the night, that promises him
an agreeable shelter from the heat of the sun, in the place to which he
is retired; and the next morning it dies.

Here the rage of the prophet becomes excessive, and he is ready to
destroy himself. "It is better, said he, for me to die than to live."
This brings on a supposed expostulation between the Almighty and the
prophet; in which the former says, "Doest thou well to be angry for the
gourd? And Jonah said, I do well to be angry even unto death. Then
said the Lord, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast
not laboured, neither madest it to grow, which came up in a night, and
perished in a night; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city,
in which are more than threescore thousand persons, that cannot discern
between their right hand and their left?"

Here is both the winding up of the satire, and the moral of the fable.
As a satire, it strikes against the character of all the Bible-prophets,
and against all the indiscriminate judgements upon men, women and
children, with which this lying book, the bible, is crowded; such as
Noah's flood, the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, the
extirpation of the Canaanites, even to suckling infants, and women with
child; because the same reflection 'that there are more than threescore
thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their
left,' meaning young children, applies to all their cases. It satirizes
also the supposed partiality of the Creator for one nation more than for
another.

As a moral, it preaches against the malevolent spirit of prediction; for
as certainly as a man predicts ill, he becomes inclined to wish it. The
pride of having his judgment right hardens his heart, till at last
he beholds with sa