Water to drink; fo fhalt thou heap Coals of Fire upon his Head :" "not, we may be fure, to burn it, though eventually it may have that Effect, if he will not relent, nor fuffer his Evil to be overcome with our Good; but to melt down his Affections, and foften the Hardness of his Heart towards us." "So fhalt thou heap Coals of Fire upon his Head, and the Lord fhall reward thee." Nay so strongly was this benevolent Difpofition urged towards an Enemy, that, when any Misfortune or Calamity befel him, the Indulgence of the least and most secret Emotion of Joy and Pleasure was exprefly and absolutely prohibited. "Rejoice not when thine Enemy falleth, and let not thine Heart be glad when he stumbleth; left the Lord fee it, and it displease him, and turn away his Wrath from him." Which Bishop Patrick thus paraphrafeth; It is great Wisdom and Virtue to pity others in their Troubles, and not to fhew any Signs of Joy and Mirth, when thou feest any Man, though he be thine Enemy, in a calamitous Condition; no, not fo much as to take any inward Pleasure in his Downfal. For though no Man fee it yet God does, and fuch inhumane Affections are so displeasing to him, that they may provoke him to tranflate the Calamity from B 4 thine

thiné Enemy unto thee, and thereby damp thy finful [málignant] Joy with a double Sorrow; firft to fee him delivered from his Trouble, and then to find thyfelf involved in it.”

This being the Cafe, that all Enmity is repugnant to the Will of God declared both in the Old and New Teftament, and all Manner of Benevolence in the highest Degree encouraged; it may be undoubtedly concluded that no Kind of Malevolence can be approved of in any divine Revelation whatever, and confequently that all Imprecations expreffive of any Reason and Malignancy of Temper, either against God's Enemies, or our own, are entirely contrary to the Nature of true Religion, and genuine Devotion; that none could ever have been used by Men under the Inspiration of the God of Love; and therefore the facred Writings, both of the Old and New Testament, must have been in their original and native Purity entirely clear of them: And if in the Perufal of them we were to meet with any Thing, that militates against the Principle of Charity, it would be certain from its very Nature, that in the Beginning it could have no Place there; that it was an Interpolation, and a grofs Corruption of the Original Text. But through God's good Providence thofe, who are

capable

capable of perufing the Scriptures, in the Lan guages in which they were originally penned, have little or nothing of this Kind to complain of. Too many and various Corruptions of flighter Confequence, owing to the Fault of Tranfcribers, are to be seen, but few, or none that are in anywife injurious to the great Law of Charity; and particularly very few Imprecations of any Kind, and I believe I may fafely pronounce none at all that exprefs the leaft Degree of Malevolence, how muchfoever they unhappily abound in one or another Translation.

Of all thofe tremendous Imprecations in our Verfion of the xxviith. Chapter of Deuteronomy there is not one authorized by the Original. The Hebrew Texts exprefs no Kind of Wif and are only fo many Denunciations of the juft Displeasure of God against thofe, who were, or fhould be guilty of the feveral Sins there mentioned, and of the Judgments they might reasonably expect to follow, unlefs prevented by a timely and thorough Repentance. And, agreeably to this, the several Texts ought to have been rendered; Curfed they; or Curfed are they, and not curfed be they in the Senfe of Let them be curfed; the Word be, though inserted in our Tranflation, having nothing answerable to it

in the Hebrew; and indeed its being printed in Italics fignifies fo much. In like Manner the Word Amen, which was to be pronounced by all the People of Ifrael at the End of each Denunciation meant it is fo, or it is true—It did not fignify, as it does when used at the Conclufion of a Prayer, Be it fo, or So be it, but, as tranflated in Mat. v. 18, Verily. In the fame Manner are we to understand all other Expreffions of a fimilar Kind to be met with in any other Parts of the Old Testament, and particularly in the Pfalms.

In order to be fully fatisfied whether the Hebrew Pfalmifts ufed any Words or Phrafes, that really breathe a malevolent malignant Spirit or not, the only effectual Method that can be taken, is, thoroughly to examine the Hebrew Pfalms themfelves. This has been done by several Writers of unqueftioned Abilities and Integrity, who have unitedly declared, that in the Hebrew Pfalms there are no Expreffions whatever, but fuch as are every Way confiftent with genuine Benevolence and Charity. The first I shall mention is that eminent Hebrew Scholar the lare Doctor Samuel Chandler. It fhould be remarked, fays he in Answer to the History of the Man after God's own Heart, that in the far greater

greater Number of thofe Places, where there appear to be direct Imprecations in our Verfion, there are none in the Original; in which the Verb is in the future Tense instead of the imperative Mood, and fo is only declaratory of what should be the Consequence [of unrepented Wickedness] inftead of the Pfalmift's Wish of what he would have to be.

It is thus particularly in the xixth. Pfalm. "Their Table fhall become aSnare before them, their Eyes fhall be darkened, that they see not," and fo on to the End without a fingle Verb in the imprecatory Form. And a most remarkable Inftance of this alfo we have in the cixth. Pfalm; which appears full of Imprecations, and yet in which, from the Beginning to the End, there are in reality scarce any to be found; and had the Verbs been rendred in the future Tense, as they ought to have been, the Pfalm would only have been a prophetic Recapitulation of the various Evils, that bad men expose themselves to, by their Impieties and Vices; or, which the parB 6 ticular

* Scarce any to be found] NONE except the firft Claufe in Verse the Sixth, which has an imprecatory Form, the Verb be ing in the imperative Mood. This Claufe will be particularly confidered and fully explained in the later Part of this Dig fertation.