Anonymous

“ This is what all mankind in general make a point of, from the saint to the malefactor. David, therefore, must certainly give us an extraordinary instance of his attention to this important evidence of contrition, But what shall we think, when we see this Nero of the Hebrews die in a manner uniform and consistent with the whole course of his life? What will be our reflections, when we find him, with his last accents, delivering two cruel and inhuman murders in charge to his son Solomon? Murders still further aggravated by the included crimes of ingratitude and perjury! ”

“ But when the extremity of adulation conferred on David the title of The Man after God's own heart, thinking men, who know the source from which such adulation ever flows, are prepared to expect, in the development of his history, a character pre-eminently wicked, and in this they are not deceived.
All historians of credit agree in describing God's chosen people, the Jews, as the most vicious and detestable of mankind;* their own historians confirm this character of them, and the whole series of facts which constitute their history, prove it beyond a possibility of doubt. ”

“ A shepherd: youth is chosen by a disgusted, prophet, to be the instrument of his revenge on an untractable king. To this, end he is inspired with ambitious hopes, by a private inauguration; is introduced to court, in the capacity of a harper; and by knocking down a man with a stone whom, if he had missed once, he had four more chances of hitting, and from whom, at the last, he could have, easily ran away; he was advanced to the dignity of son-in-law to the king. So sudden and unlooked for a promotion within sight of the throne, stimulated expectations already awakened ”

“ Had the flattering sycophants of king David been satisfied with applying to him this common-place appellation, rational men, who form their conclusions from the result of general experience, would have inferred only that he had been one of the numerous herd of bad princes who have oppressed mankind, and there would have been nothing peculiar either in the fact or the inference. ”

“ Whenever the human mind is debased and degraded by a system of gross superstition, it becomes incapable of any one manly, liberal, or independent sentiment; every energy of the mind is lost, reason is surrendered, virtue, the chief support, if not the sole foundation of freedom, is banished, and man is fitted to receive the abject yoke of slavery ”

“ Of this policy we shall observe David to be mindful, in the ensuing transaction. Not that a panegyric upon his contrivance in this instance is by any means intended; for certainly a more barefaced transaction was never exhibited: such indeed as could only have been attempted among the poor bigoted Jews. It is sufficient, however, that it answered David's purpose; than which more could not have been expected from the most complete stroke that refined politics ever produced. But view it in a moral light, and certainly a blacker piece of ingratitude and perfidy can hardly be imagined. ”

“ Other nations had a few priests dedicated to their gods or idols, seldom exceeding a few dozen in a whole nation but the Jewish priesthood constituted a twelfth part of the whole people, and claimed and exercised the privilege of devouring a tenth part of the produce of the country, without contributing any thing to its productive labour.* And it is probable that the Jewish nation alone, though but a miserable handful of semi-barbarous savages, had more priests than the rest of the then known world collectively, and were consequently more vicious and more enslaved than any other people. ”

“ If the reformed religion means any thing, it must mean a religion founded by the authority, not of councils and synods, but of conviction, the result of private judgment. True Protestants do not puzzle themselves about the decisions of Trent, Constance, or Dort; they protest against all authoritative dictates; disciples of the meek, the lowly, the humane Jesus, they seek of themselves to judge of right or wrong. Who is most the Protestant, the friend to human kind, and to truth? Those who appeal to the human understanding, and submit to the public judgment whether things are really so or not ”

“ It will avail nothing to plead the private faults of the man; we are now to consider him as relative to David, in his public capacity. In which light we must loath the master, who died meditating black ingratitude against so faithful, so useful a servant. For even his defection at last may, perhaps, admit of being interpreted into a patronization of that particular plan for the succession, rather than into a rebellion against the superannuated monarch.
His other charge was against Shimei, who reviled David at his retreat from Jerusalem, during Absalom's rebellion ”

“ The writer does not pledge himself to reconcile rapine and cruelty, with morality and religion; there are Commentators who love these knotty affairs; to them they are left. When the vindictive tenor of any of David's psalms has been insisted on, the translation is immediately censured; prudently enough; as every one who has sense to perceive the incongruity between such bloody wishes and denunciations, and the acknowledged purity and mercy of the All-beneficent Father of Nature, may not have learning enough to dispute about Hebrew points, and to make them point what meaning he pleases. ”

“ So strangely do relative circumstances bias our judgment of things essentially alike. Had David aspired to no other sceptre than his shepherd's crook, the villains had not presumed on the usurper's gratitude; and Ish-bosheth, who was a quiet prince, might have reigned long an honour to himself and a blessing to his country.
Ish-bosheth does not appear to have been a man of parts, qualified to contend with such an antagonist as David ”

“ But, when he is exalted and placed in a conspicuous point of view, as an eminent example of piety! he then necessarily attracts our notice in an especial manner, and we are naturally led to wonder, that a more happy subject of panegyric had not been chosen. If he was an holy psalmist; if he is styled the Man after God's own heart; he also lived the life here exhibited: and his capability of uniting such contrarities, does but augment his guilt!
Yet, even in his psalms, he frequently breathes nothing but blood, and the most rancorous resentment against his enemies. ”

“ The power and influence of the priest and the tyrant is ever in proportion to the debasement of man; they have a common interest, have ever made a common cause against him, and have constantly erected their common throne on the ruins of his freedom, his welfare, and his happiness. ”

“ Had David reflected on all the circumstances which led to this murder, with that tenderness becoming a person professing so much piety, his compunction would have greatly embarrassed him in the proper behaviour on this occasion. For if these two execrable villains deserved punishment, what did he merit who was the primary cause of so nefarious an action? Two poor rogues from subordinate views, effected by assassination what David sought at the head of an army, which naturally reminds us of the pirate and Alexander. ”

“ This complicated crime committed by David is universally allowed; but people think so little for them selves, that even this would be qualified, were it not found ready condemned to their hand in the relation of it. This crime is given up too, as the only stain in David's character: but the circumstances of it will not permit this to be granted, abstracted from any consideration of the man. For, though a generally good man may, in a sudden start of any of the passions, lose government of himself so far, as to violate conjugal fidelity, or perhaps suddenly to kill another ”

“ The love of truth is a motive which ought to supersede every other consideration: for every other consideration is subordinate in comparison with it. Truth requires no tenderness of investigation, and scorns all subterfuges. ”

“ Pour out thy wrath as hot as fire, That it on them may fall, Let thy displeasure in thine ire Take hold upon them all. As desarts dry their house disgrace, Their seed do thou expel, That none thereof possess their place, Nor in their tents once dwell. ”

“ They well knew that man, in the most abject state of mental degradation to which superstition could reduce him, must still acknowledge the force and excellence of virtue and morality, and must perceive their necessary tendency to promote his welfare and happiness. ”

“ We now come to the hero of the history.
In pursuance of his intention to make another king, Samuel went under the pretence of a sacrifice, and anointed another country youth, which was David, the youngest son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite; and gave him the spirit of the Lord, which he had just taken from poor Saul. The king, in the mean time, reflecting on the precariousness of his situation, now that the priests, on the part of Samuel, were incensed against him ”

“ They well knew how useful to their own views and interests it would be to persuade him that religion, virtue, and morality, were one and the same, or, at least, intimately and inseparably connected; the credulity of man gave credit to the imposture without examination, and the uniform experience of above 2,000 years has not hitherto been sufficient to undeceive him. ”

“ In what manner David first acquired, and has ever since maintained, this extraordinary reputation, is not difficult to deduce, he was advanced, by an enraged prophet, from obscurity to the Hebrew throne; and taught by the fate of the unhappy monarch who was raised in the same manner, whom he supplanted, and whose family he crushed, he prudently attached himself to the cause of his patrons,* and they were the trumpeters of his fame. ”

“ Abner was the person who raised him; and had he lived, would as easily have deposed him, and though no qualifications are a security against assassination, yet, as in the case of another unfortunate monarch, Darius, king of Persia; such cowardly wretches generally take the advantage of precipitating misfortunes already commenced, that they may pay their court to the rising sun.
The murder of this unhappy son of an unhappy father, advanced David to the dignity to which he aspired,* (though we shall see in a passage which reflects no great honour on him, that Saul had more sons yet living.) ”

“ He therefore reserved Mephibosheth, in memory of another oath between him and his father Jonathan. Mephibosheth having such a shocking scene to contemplate, and, considering his decrepitude, might (as he really was) with little hazard be preserved, as an evidence of probity in this pious king.
A conscience of convenient flexibility is of great use: thus David being under obligation by two oaths, forgot one, and remembered the other. ”

“ Mankind have been too long duped by that universal cant of priests, who, in their language, have ever affected to couple religion and morality together, and to represent them as inseparably united, though the slightest attention must show that they are perfectly distinct, and a full and mature consideration of the subject must prove that they are even extremely opposite. ”

“ When cattle feel indisposition, And need th' opinion of physician; When murrain reigns in hogs or sheep, And chickens languish of the pip; When yeast and outward means do fail, And have no power to work on ale; When butter does refuse to come. ”

“ He could entertain no hopes that the Jews would receive for their king a man who, with such great seeming holiness, should imbrue his hands in the blood of the Lord's anointed. Beside, what evidently destroys the boasted merit of David's forbearance toward Saul, in this instance, is an obvious, though overlooked consideration, that, compared with David, Saul had a strong army with, him; and had the king been missing, had he been observed to enter the cave without coming out again ”

“ David hearing of him, and that he was at that time sheep-shearing, sent a detachment of his followers to levy a contribution upon him,** making a merit of his forbearance, in that he had not stolen his sheep, and murdered his shepherds.*** Nabal, who, to be sure, was not the most courteous man in the world, upon receiving this extraordinary message, gave them but a very indifferent reply, including a flat denial. "Who," says he, "is David? and who is the son of Jesse? There be many servants nowadays that break away every man from his master. ”

“ Thus it must mean an uncontrolled power to examine the validity of every proposition offered to our assent; without which power, and the due exercise of it, our assent cannot be the assent of rational beings. ”

“ Can man fight against God? since therefore his continual aim was to destroy David, it argues against this assurance: and if Saul himself was mad, surely his soldiers were not: how came he to find an army as mad as himself, to persecute the Lord's anointed.
* 1 Sam. xxx. 31. ** Ch. xxxi.
We shall now have an opportunity to observe the conduct of our hero in a regal capacity. The death of Saul facilitated his advancement to a sovereignty, to which he had no pretension, either by the right of inheritance, which was claimed by Ish-bosheth, a remaining son of Saul ”

“ As, however, the Israelites, on the foundation of their own intimacy with the Deity, thought they had no more obligations to a moral conduct towards the heathens, than the Roman Catholics now imagine they have to keep faith with heretics; these advocates endeavour to preserve the piety of David's character, at the expence of what David, according to this method of arguing, did extremely well without, on all occasions ”