to reduce them to an unnatural bondage, on account of national iniquities! Even the present state of mankind affords some melancholy proofs of this. How many nations, now subsisting in the world, have forfeited their natural liberty, and are now sitting under the iron yokes of unnatural, arbitrary governments, subjected to the will and pleasure of their respective sovereigns, instead of law! And if the particular history of any, or perhaps all, of these nations be carefully examined, it will not, I believe, be found that any of them were ever reduced to such a deplorable state of national misery, till by national wickedness, and public contempt of God's eternal laws, they had rendered a national retribution strictly necessary, according to the unerring rules of eternal justice! All hopes, therefore of redress to these enslaved nations must be vain, without a sincere reformation of manners in each nation respectively, and without public and most earnest national or general endeavors to obtain reconciliation and forgiveness from the the King of Kings; as nothing but a strict obedience to his laws can render any nation truly free. Jeremiah made the same declaration also to the priests and people that he had made to the king: "Also I spake" (says he) "to the priests, and to all the people, saying, thus saith the Lord; hearken not to the words of your prophets that prophesy unto you, saying, behold, the vessels of the Lord's house shall now shortly be brought again from Babylon; for they prophesy a lie (Micah iii. 11. Nehem. vi. 10 to 12.) unto you. Hearken not unto them: serve the king of Babylon, and live. Wherefore should this city be laid waste?" Jer. xxvii. 16, 17.
The wicked prophets, who thus misled the people with lies, presumed nevertheless to use the sacred name of Jehovah (Jer. xxvii. 14, 15,) as if they had really declared the will of God; so that the true prophet had need, not only of all those unquestionable proofs of his divine mission, which I have already mentioned, but even, of other proofs also, to enable him to oppose the lying prophets, who pretended to speak in the name of Jehovah, as well as himself; for "In the same year" (that is, in the fourth of
