And so were fulfilled in them two laws of God.
The one which Ezekiel lays down--that the bad man's son who executes
God's judgments and walks in God's statutes shall not die for the
iniquity of his father, but surely live; and the other law which Moses
lays down--that God shews mercy unto thousands of generations, as I
believe it means--that is, to son after father, and son after father
again, without end--as long as they love Him and keep His commandments.
I do not, therefore, see that there is any real contradiction between
what Moses says in the second commandment and what Ezekiel says in this
chapter. They are but two different sides of the same truth; and Moses
is shewing the Jews one side, because they needed most to be taught that
in his time, and Ezekiel showing them the other, because that was the
teaching which they needed most then. For they were fancying themselves,
in their calamities, the victims of some blind and cruel fate, and had
forgotten that, when God said that He visited the sins of the fathers on
the children, He qualified it by saying, "of them that hate Me.
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