An Apology for Christianity - 1791 Author:Richard Watson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: f, and the lightmrtgsy and the noife of the tempeft, and the mountains Jmoking ; and when the people Jaw it, they removed and flood afar off: and they Jaid unto ... more »Mofes y Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not Godjpeak voitb us, left we die.—This again, Sit, is the Scripture account of the language of the contemporaries of Mofes and Jofhua; and I leave it to you to confider whether this is the language offtubborn incredulity, andcare lefs indifference We are told in Scripture, too, that whilft any of the contemporaries of Mofes and Jofhua were alive, the whole people ferved the Lord: the impreffion which a fight of the miracles had made, was never effaced-— nor the obedience, which might have chapter{Section 4been expected as a natural confc- juence, refufed—till Mofes and Jo- (hua, and all their contemporaries, were gathered unto their fathers j till another generation after them arofe, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the -works which he had done for IJrael.— But the -people Jerved the Lord all the days of Jvjhua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Jofhua, who hadjeen all the great works of the Lord that he did for IJraeL I am far from thinking you, Sir, unacquainted with Scripture, or cle- firous of finking the weight of its tef- timony ; but as the words of the hif- tory from which you muft have derived your obfervation, will not fup- port you in imputing iare'efs indifference t-v the contemporaries of Mofes, C or or JliM'crn incredulity to the forefathers of the Jews, I know not what can have induced you to pafs fo fe- vere a cenfure upon them, except that you look upon a lapfe into idolatry as a proof of infidelity. In anfvver to this I would remark, that with equal foundnefs of argument we ought to infer, that every one who tranfgreflesa relig...« less