Page:Whole works of joseph butler.djvu/100

69 thorough honest man would, without hesitation, have repeated his former answer, that he could not be guilty of so infamous a prostitution of the sacred character with which he was invested, as, in the name of a prophet, to curse those whom he knew to be blessed. But instead of this, which was the only honest part in these circumstances that lay before him, he desires the princes of Moab to tarry that night with him also; and, for the sake of the reward, deliberates whether, by some means or other, he might not be able to obtain leave to curse Israel: to do that which bad been before revealed to him to be contrary to the will of God, which yet he resolves not to do without that permission. Upon which, as when this nation afterwards rejected God from reigning over them, he gave them a king in his anger; in the same way, as appears from other parts of the narration, he gives Balaam the permission he desired: for this is the most natural sense of the words. Arriving in the territories of Moab, and being received with particular distinction by the king, and he repeating in person the promise of the rewards he had before made to him by his ambassadors, he seeks, the text says, by sacrifices and enchantments, (what these were is not to our purpose,) to obtain leave of God to curse the people; keeping still his resolution, not to do it without that permission; which, not being able to obtain, he had such regard to the command of God, as to keep this resolution to the last. The supposition of his being under a supernatural restraint is a mere fiction of Philo. He is plainly represented to be under no other force or restraint than the fear of God. However, he goes on persevering in that endeavour, after he had declared that "God had not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither had he seen perverseness in Israel," Num. xxiii. 21; i.e., they were a people of virtue and piety, so far as not to have drawn down, by their iniquity, that curse which he was soliciting leave to pronounce upon them. So that the state of Balaam's mind