For they
could not have forgotten that the Egyptians "had made them serve with
rigour; that they had made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar,
and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; and that all the
service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour." The argument
therefore of Moses was simply this; "Ye knew well, when ye were strangers
in Egypt, the nature of your own feelings. Were you not made miserable by
your debased situation there? But if so, you must be sensible that the
stranger, who has the same heart, or the same feelings with yourselves,
must experience similar suffering, if treated in a similar manner. I charge
you then, knowing this, to stand clear of the crime of his oppression."
The law, then, by which Moses commanded the Children of Israel to regulate
their conduct with respect to the usage of the stranger, I showed to be a
law of universal and eternal obligation, and for this, among other reasons,
that it was neither more nor less than the Christian law, which appeared
afterwards, that we should not do that to others, which we should be
unwilling to have done unto ourselves.
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