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Untitled Article
inaccurately stated > The nature , that is , the genius and spirit of the two religions is not different but one and the same . " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart , and with all thy understanding and with all thy strength : * ' This is the first precept of both dispensations : and " thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ; " is the grand rule of social virtue in both . Also , who our
neighbour is , has been sufficiently explained by our Lord in the parable of the good Samaritan . The only difficulty therefore remaining is , that which has often been stated , and in my apprehension as often most satisfactorily answered , How can the precept to exterminate the Canaanites be
reconciled to the law of universal benevolence ? The facts as they are exhibited in the Jewish history stand thus . The inhabitants of Canaan by the
practice of those odious crimes to which they had been instigated by their abominable idolatries , tvere become fit objects for exemplary punishment . Had they been exterminated from the earth bv
pestilence or famine , no one would bave thought of impeaching the wisdom or the justice of divine providence . But the Sovereign of the universe had an equal right to employ the sword of the Israelites to execute his awful man .
date . And in the present instance there was this great advantage , that it made it a fact of public notoriety , that the sufferings of the guilty inhabitants of Qanaan
were inflicted upon them as a just punishment of xbeir crimes , and as an awful warning , to the surrounding nations . But * Hat the Israelites were not de-
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ceived in regarding themselves as the authorized ministers of divine justice , is evident from the miracles which attended their progress
through the wilderness , and particularly those by which their conquests were introduced , the dividing of the waters of the . river Jordan , and the falling down of the wall of Jericho . In the ex * .
termination of the C ^ a-naanites therefore , the Israelites can incur no blame as they acted under a divine commission . Many however , - think it is highly improbable that the common Father of mankind should
employ one nation to exterminate another . But in fact this , is no more than what occurs every day * The Spaniards were employed ti * exterminate the Americans . ; the English to spill the blood , and to enslave the persons of the Africans ; and the present ruler of France ^
to destroy hundreds of thousands of lives to gratify his own enormous and unprincipled ambition . All this it is indeed alledged i $ by permission , not by express appointment . —But in my mind ,
with ngard to the supreme Being who is the cause of all causes , and who foresees the end from the beginning , permission and appointment coalesce into one and the same idea , the difference , between them is less than any given difference . They cannot be
separated even In thought . All creatures fulfil the purposes of the great Supreme , only , that ir * common case * he makes use of the
bad passions of mankind to accomplish his designs : in the case of the Israelites he enjoins it as an act of duty . Cyrus and Jo shua were equally the ministers of the divine pleasure : but the fpj >
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} Ir < Belsham on the Consistent */ and Truth of Divine Revelation . 5 Si
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1808, page 581, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2398/page/5/
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