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the depth of the riches both of the goodness and wisdom of God!-how unfearchable are his ways, and his paths paft finding out! Now to God, etc

SERMON XVIII.

The Ingratitude of Ifrael.

PP

SERMON XVIII.

2 KINGS XVii. 7.

For fo it was, that the children of Ifrael had finned against the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt.

HE words of the text account for the

THE

cause of a fad calamity, which is related, in the foregoing verfes, to have befallen a great number of Ifraelites, who were furprized, in the capital city of Samaria, by Hofea king of Affyria, and cruelly carried away by him out of their own country, and placed on the defolate frontiers of Halah, and in Haber, by the river Gozan, and in the city of the Medes, and there confined to end their days in forrow and captivity.-Upon which the facred hiftorian, inftead of accounting for fo fad an event merely from political springs and causes; fuch, for instance, as the fuperi

or strength and policy of the enemy, or an unfeasonable provocation given,—or that proper measures of defence were neglected;-he traces it up, in one word, to its true caufe:For fo it was, fays he, that the children of Ifrael had finned againft the Lord their God, who brought them up out of the land of Egypt.—It was surely a fufficient foundation to dread fome evil,-that they had finned against that Being, who had an unquestionable right to their obedience.-But what an aggravation was it that they had not only finned fimply against the truth, but against the God of mercies,—who had brought them forth out of the land of Egypt;-who not only created, upheld, and favoured them with fo many advantages in common with the rest of their fellow-creatures, but who had been particularly kind to them in their misfortunes;-who, when they were in the house of bondage, in the most hopeless condition, without a profpect of any natural means of redress, had compaffionately heard their cry, and took pity upon the afflictions of a diftreffed people,—and, by a chain of miracles, delivered them from fer

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