172 



Marsham and Usher, and it elucidates their cause. It traces 

 through all the involutions of sophistical ingenuity, their vari- 

 ous and evident errors, misconceptions, and obscurities, which 

 supported by no authority but conjecture, and a continued 

 lyetitio principii; and resting on no grounds but their ingenious 

 misinterpretation of many texts, to adhere (" quasi obtorto 

 collo," says Perizonius) to one; iirst brought the reading 

 (1 Kings, 6. 1.) into neglect, and finally originated the many 

 inconsistent systems, answering equally to every hypothesis 

 that were founded on its ruins. It agrees, without forcing, 

 with the sacred text, in finding nearly three iiundred years 

 from the conquest of the Amorites to the age of Jepthah. 

 It grants to Joshua a duration of legislative jurisdiction 

 conformable to the sense and expression of Scripture and the 

 fathers. It allots to the government of the elders and to 

 the fidelity of the Israelites, in the worship of the true and 

 only God, a period which answers the conditions of the in- 

 terpretation and sense of Scripture, (Jud. 2. 7- & 10. Jos. 24.) 

 where it is said, " Israel served the Lord all the days of 

 Joshua and the elders that over-lived Joshua," to which 

 (Jud. 2. 10.) it is added, to give a more precise idea of the 

 duration, " all that generation were gathered unto their 

 fathers," &c. The Vulgate reads, in the first verse quoted, 

 " et seniorum (^ui longe vixerunt tempore post Josluie." Sec. 

 By " that generation," the Sripture can understand only those 

 who were imder twenty years of age, in the second year of the 



cxod, 



