Wesley Corpus

19,) where they had heard the Lord, but a little before, saying, out of the midst of the fire, “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven image; thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them.” And how amazing was their beha viour during those whole forty years that they sojourned in the wilderness! even while he “led them in the day-time with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire!” (Psalm lxxviii. 14.) Such were the knowledge and virtue of God’s peculiar people, (certainly the most knowing and virtuous nation which was then to be found upon the face of the earth,) till God brought them into the land of Canaan;-considerably more than two thousand years from the creation of the world. None, I presume, will say there was any other nation at that time more knowing and more virtuous than the Israelites. None can say this while he professes to believe, according to the scriptural account, that Israel was then underatheocracy, under the immediate government of God; that he conversed with their subordinate governor “face to face, as a man talketh with his friend;” and that God was daily, through him, conveying such instructions to them as they were capable of receiving. 7. Shall we turn our eyes for a moment from the scriptural to the profane account of mankind in the earliest ages? What was the general sentiment of the most polite and knowing nation, the Romans, when their learning was in its utmost perfection? Let one, who certainly was no bigot or enthusiast, speak for the rest. And he speaks home to the point: Nam fuit ante Helenam cunnus teterrima belli Causa; sed ignotis perierunt mortibus omnes Quos venerem incertam rapientes more ferarum, Viribus editior caedebat, ut in grege taurus. “Full many a war has been for women waged Ere half the world in Helen’s cause engaged; But, unrecorded in historic verse, Obscurely died those savage ravishers, Who like brute beasts the female bore away, Till some superior brute re-seized the prey: A a wild bull, his rival bull o'erthrown, Claims the whole subject herd, and reigns alone.” I doubt he who gives this, not as his peculiar opinion, but as what was then a generally-received notion, would scarce have allowed even so much as Juvenal,-- Pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam In terris...............