the locufts, and caft them into the Red Sea, there remained not one locuft in all the coafts of Egypt.' What is there in all this that is not the effect of a power fuperior to that of nature? 1. Mofes and Aaron threaten the King, and in the space of a day, the threat is executed in every point. 2. Mofes only ftretches forth his hand, and all Egypt changes its appearance. 3. An east wind rifes in the evening, blows the whole day, and continues during the night, and yet the infects enter the country only at the appointed time. 4. Locufts appear, but of an extraordinary fpecies which never had been feen before; whereas according to the conftant laws of animated beings, it is impoffible that one kind can produce any thing but its like. 5. Armies of locufts have been feen ravaging one province or another of a kingdom; but have they ever been known all at onceoccupying the whole extent of a country? Have infects ever been found fo numerous, as to cover the face of the earth, and to obfcure the light of day? 6. Locufts quit one field, and light upon another: but here they attack Pharoah in his palace furrounded by his guards; they enter the cabinets of his minifters, they afflict his officers in their houfes; they encounter his foldiers in their quarters, and defolate his fubjects in their cottages. 7. Thofe infects in their ravages, always leave what is not agreeable to their taste, or at least what they are unable to ufe, but in Egypt they devoured every green thing. 8. The author of the Book of Wisdom, Chap. xvi. 9. fays that "for them (the Egyptians) the bitings of grafshoppers and flies killed, neither was there found any remedy for their life, for they were worthy to be punished by fuch."9. Pharaoh himself confeffes this in the prayer he addreffes to Mofes and Aaron, where he gives thefe infects the name of death. 10. Lastly, there arifes a west wind which purifies Egypt, fo that there remains nothing of what the contrary wind had brought. This laft fat perhaps may be attributed

to

to nature; but there is ftill in it fomething miraculous.

We read in the fixteenth Chapter of Exodus, 19, 20, that Mofes exprefsly prohibited the children of Ifrael from leaving the manna till the morning, and that when, notwithstanding his prohibition, they kept it, it bred worms and ftank. We fee on the contrary. 22. 23, that on the fixth day, the eve of the Sabbath, they gathered twice as much bread, and preserved it without its corrupting. I ask is there any thing like this in the regular and common courfe of Nature? A fingle day of the week excepted, a day fo diftinguished from the rest of so short a period, is undoubtedly a prodigy which confounds the laws of nature. For how is it poffible that it fhould rain manna for fix fucceeding days, while on the feventh there fhould not fall a fingle drop? How could it happen that from Monday to Friday an article of food fhould corrupt in a night, while from Saturday to Sunday, it fhould remain unchanged?

"he

Let us turn to the twenty third chapter of Exodus where it is faid, verfe 28, that if the people of Ifrael would hearken to the voice of God, would send hornets before them, which fhould drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite and the Hittite from before them." The promife is renewed by Mofes, DEUTR. vii. 20. "Moreover the Lord thy God will fend the hornet among them, until they that are left and hide themselves from thee, be deftroyed." We cannot doubt that God performed what he had promised to his people. Joshua afferts it in the last speech he pronounced to the tribes of Ifrael. Chap. xxiv. 12. "And I fent the hornet before you which drave them out from before you, even the two kings of the Amorites but not with thy fword or with thy bow." M m 3

This

This is another miracle. That hornets fhould affault and put to flight the nations of the heathen, and that only the people of Ifrael fhould escape from their sting, is unaccountable, except by referring it to the power of the most high.

The book of Jonah, Chap. iv. 5, 6, 7, informs us that the prophet" went out of the city and fat on the east fide thereof, and made him a booth and fat under it in the fhadow, till he might fee what would become of the city. And the Lord prepared a gourd, and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a fhadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief; and that God prepared a worm when the morning rofe, and it fmote the gourd that it withered." Though it is not miraculous that a worm fhould devour a plant, we cannot help acknowledg ing in the growth and destruction of Jonah's gourd a fupernatural direction of providence; for in order to convince the prophet that he erred in murmuring against God for having preserved Nineveh, he caused the gourd to grow in a fingle night, fo as to prove a fhade to the booth, and to defend it from the extreme heat of the fun; and in the morning, caused a worm to destroy it. Upon Jonah's murmuring at the destruction of the gourd, God takes occafion to say,

Thou wouldst that the gourd had been spared, for the which thou haft not laboured, neither madeft it grow; And fhould not I fpare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than fix fcore thousand per fons?

The fate of Herod, as it is defcribed in Acts xii. 21. 22. 23. is as terrible, as it is incomprehenfible in itself. "And upon a fet day, Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, fat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a fhout, fay ing, it is the voice of a god, and not of a man.

And

1

And immediately the Angel of the Lord fmote him, because he gave not God the glory; and he was eaten of worms, and he gave up the ghoft." Antiochus perished in the fame manner, being ftruck by an invifible hand, "fo that the worms rofe out of the body of that wicked man, and while he lived in forrow and pain, his flesh fell away, and the filthiness of his smell was noifome to all his army. And the man that thought a little afore, he could reach to the ftars of heaven, no man could endure to carry, for his intolerable ftink." II. Maccab. ix. 9. 10. This is that Antiochus, king of Syria, that tyrant, that monster, filled with pride, and drunk with the blood of the Ifraelites, whose death, as above related, is confirmed by Polybius. He confeffes, that he was eaten by worms, though he attributes the caufe to his having conceived the defign of pillaging the temple of Diana at Elymais; but Jofephus, with more reafon, afcribes it to his intention of destroying the temple of Jerufalem. Of what nature those infects were, is of no confequence to my argument; it is fufficient for me, that the Scripture hath declared, that they were eaten of worms: that the first was ftruck by an Angel of the Lord, and that the other, humbled to the earth, fhewed to all, the avenging hand of God.

NOTES.