When you have leisure, you may follow Israel Forty years journey in the wilderness. How do they tread the Maze as it were! backward and forward, up and down; advance to day, and to morrow a turn again; march ten miles perhaps, and then fetch a compass and retreat twenty it may be: and all the way encountered with such difficulties and desperate hazards, that they, would have been an hundred and an hundred times contented with all their hearts, to have exchanged their New liberty for their Old bondage; to have sold Canaan for Egypt again, and have though they had made a good bargain. Yea, once more, when now at length, through innumerable dangers and deaths, for Forty years together, they had set foot ⟨p. 6⟩on the Borders of Canaan, their terminus ad quem; and one would have thought there had been nothing more to have been done, but to have taken possession; behold, they meet with such a fresh unexpected discouragement; their valley of Jericho is turned into a valley of Achor; their fair fruitful meadows, into another wilderness; where they were at such a plunge, as not to Israel only, but unto their gallant General, Joshua himself, seems the loss of their design; 1makes him rend his clothes, his heart being first rent, 2and wish that they had taken up their Quarters on the other side Jordan.
When you have leasure, you may follow Israel Fourty yeers journey in the wildernesse. How do they tread the Maze as it were! backward and forward, up and down; advance to day, and to morrow a turn again; march ten miles perhaps, and then fetch a compasse and retreat twenty it may be: and all the way encountred with such difficulties and desperate hazards, that they, would have been an hundred and an hundred times contented with all their hearts, to have exchanged their New liberty for their Old bondage; to have sold Canaan for Egypt again, and have though they had made a good bargain. Yea, once more, when now at length, through innumerable dangers and deaths, for Fourty yeers together, they had set foot ⟨p. 6⟩on the Borders of Canaan, their terminus ad quem; and one would have thought there had been nothing more to have been done, but to have taken possession; behold, they meet with such a fresh unexpected discouragement; their valley of Jericho is turned into a valley of Achor; their fair fruitful meadows, into another wildernesse; where they were at such a plunge, as not to Israel onely, but unto their gallant General, Joshua himself, seems the losse of their designe; 1makes him rend his clothes, his heart being first rent, 2and wish that they had taken up their Quarters on the other side Jordan.
- 1Josh 7.5.6.
- 2Vers. 7.
