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which does not desire to support a system, but, to record a fact, 

 is very different: (Sam1.7-3.) "And Samuel spake unto all 

 the house of Israel, saying, ' if ye do return unto the Lord 

 with all your hearts, then put away the strange Gods and 

 Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the 

 Lord, and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the 

 hands of the Philistines. Then the children of Israel did put 

 away Baalim and Ashtaroth, and served the Lord only." Was 

 it necessary, after twenty years of virtue to speak thus ? Or, 

 are we to suppose, that after so many late and awful evi- 

 dences of the sin of disobedience, and of the presence and 

 providence of the Deity; from experienced misfortune from 

 consummated prophecy ; from previous denunciation ; and 

 from miraculous interference; so long a period would have 

 been passed in the practices of vice, in a perseverance m 

 idolatrij and in the commission of those sins which had sub- 

 jected them to the wrath and visitation of Heaven '^ Surely, 

 we must suppose, that, the growth of those evils, and the prac- 

 tice of those idolatries, is to be referred to the period of the ju- 

 risdiction of Eli, corresponding, and contemporaneous to, the 

 oppression of the Philistines; (Jud. xiii. 1.) an age and period 

 sufficiently determined to have been fruitful in iniquity; to 

 have been so far disobedient and rebellious, as to be aban- 

 doned by the long suffering justice of Heaven to its own 

 evils ; (Saml. iii. 1.) for we read, " the word of the Lord was 

 precious in those days ; there was no open vision." And it 



was 



