Page:A memoir of Granville Sharp.djvu/148

144 thus saith the Lord God of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and of the land of Israel; they shall eat their bread with carefulness; and drink their water with astonishment, that her land may be desolate from all that is therein, because of the violence of them that dwell therein." Ezek. xii. 19. The nature of this baneful violence, which occasioned their destruction, is more particularly described by the same prophet, in chap. xxii. ver. 7.—"in the midst of thee" (still speaking of Jerusalem) "have they dealt by oppression with the stranger" (mark this ye British slave dealers and slaveholders); "in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow. Thou hast despised mine holy things, and hast profaned my Sabbaths. In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness," &c.—"One hath committed abomination with his neighbour's wife: and another hath lewdly defiled his daughter-in-law," &c. "In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood: thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion, and hast forgotton me, saith the Lord God. Behold, therefore, I have smitten mine hand at thy dishonest gain which thou hast made, and at thy blood which hath been in the midst of thee," &c. Ezek. xxii. 7, &c.

Oh that the subjects of the British empire would seriously compare these crimes with their own practices! they would then, surely, be sensible of their danger; and that they have reason to expect the like, or rather much heavier, judgments, than those denounced against the Jews! For, besides the notorious adulteries, and other acts of lewdness, which many amongst us (from the frequency of such crime) commit, even without shame or remorse, we have far exceeded the guilt of the Jews, I fear, in many of the other points also which provoked the vengeance of the Almighty against them! What "violence" amongst the Jews, before their captivity, was ever "risen up into" so destructive "a rod of wickedness"—as the African slave trade, now carried on chiefly by our Liverpool and Bristol merchants? What "bloody crime" among the