Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

SERMON XIV.

THAT THE DOCTRINE OF THE RECOMPENSE OF REWARD TO BE BESTOWED ON THE RIGHTEOUS AFTER THIS LIFE, WAS UNDERSTOOD AND BELIEVED BY THE PEOPLE OF GOD BEFORE THE LAW WAS GIVEN; AND THAT IT IS LAWFUL TO SERVE GOD WITH RESPECT TO, OR IN HOPE OF, THE FUTURE HEAVENLY RECOMPENSE.

HEBREWS xi. 26.

For he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. THIS chapter throughout is an encomium or commendation of faith; the efficacy and virtue whereof the divine author declares and sets forth by very many examples of those saints and holy men, that were the ancestors of the Jews to whom he wrote, and who by faith did and suffered many great and wonderful things. Wherein the design of the author is to animate and encourage the Christian Jews to a constant perseverance in the profession and obedience of Christ's Gospel, notwithstanding the persecutions which they suffered from their unbelieving brethren for the sake thereof. Which indeed were so severe, that some of those Christian Jews, to avoid them, had already shrunk from and deserted the Church assemblies, as we learn from the 25th verse of the preceding chapter, and were in danger of a total apostasy from Christianity: the dreadful consequence whereof the author excellently sets forth in the following verses of the same chapter to the end. But to fortify them against those persecutions, the most effectual means being a stedfast faith and belief of the future reward, he therefore in this chapter exemplifies such a faith in very many most illustrious instances thereof, recorded in the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

The paragraph, of which my text is part, concerns Moses the great prophet and legislator of the Jews, whom above all others they admired; and therefore the divine writer dwells longer upon his example.

He begins with the nativity of Moses, and therein takes occasion to set forth the faith of the religious parents of so excellent a son"; "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw him a proper" (or goodly) "child, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment." Which words some very learned interpreters think have reference to an ancient tradition among the Jews, delivered us by Josephus", "That God appeared to Amram the father of Moses by dream, and promised him a son, who should in due time deliver the Hebrews from the Egyptian bondage." Which oracle both Amram and his wife, to whom he communicated it, firmly believing, and observing the goodliness and admirable features of Moses, when he was born, promising something extraordinary in him, they concluded that this was the happy child which the oracle had promised them; and therefore they did the best they could to preserve him, notwithstanding the cruel edict of Pharaoh, which they feared not so much, as they confided in the Divine prediction, and expected some miraculous providence in the case. Indeed that there was some oracle of God delivered concerning Moses, that he should be the redeemer of the Israelites, long before God appeared to him in the bush, (though the sacred history of the Old Testament is silent therein,) is evident enough from the words of St. Stephen concerning him. Where the protomartyr having mentioned Moses's going forth from Pharaoh's court to visit his brethren the Hebrews, and appearing in the behalf of one of them so far as to slay the Egyptian that injured and oppressed him; he presently adds, "for he supposed his brethren would have understood, how that God by his hands would deliver them."

If he supposed his brethren would have understood this, it is beyond all question he understood it himself. And how could he understand it, but by some Divine prediction concerning him to that purpose, antecedent to God's illustrious appearing to him in the bush? Nor is it any contradiction to this, what we read in the third and fourth chapters of Exodus, that

a Ver. 23.

Joseph. Antiq. ii. 5.

• Acts vii,

d Ver. 23, 24.

• Ver. 25.

when God appeared to Moses in the bush, and commanded him to go to Pharaoh and demand from him the freedom of the Israelites, he a first and second time refused the embassy, or at least was unwilling to undertake it. For this he did, because he looked upon it as impossible by way of treaty to obtain the liberty of God's people from the proud, stubborn, cruel, and inexorable tyrant; at least impossible for him in the ill circumstances he was now in; his life being sought by Pharaoh and the Egyptians for the life of the Egyptian whom he had slain: upon which account he concluded, that he should be so far from procuring the release of the Israelites from their bondage by his going into Egypt, that, as soon as he set foot there, he should infalliby meet with his own death. And indeed that this was at the very bottom of Moses's refusal is evident from hence, that God at least for his encouragement thus bespeaks him: "Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life'." That herein Moses was to be blamed, as at present under a great conflict of unbelief and distrust of God, cannot be doubted; seeing the holy text expressly tells us, that "the anger of the Lord was kindled against him for it."

But the divine author of this Epistle thought it both charitable and reasonable to draw a veil of silence over this infirmity of the otherwise excellent person, which he himself had so candidly confessed to the world in his own writings; and to take no notice of the short eclipse of his faith, which both before and after (excepting only in one instance more) shone with so bright a glory.

Wherefore the admirable faith of Moses himself, in his first adventure, he thus in the next place elegantly describes"; "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt." That is, when he was forty years old, (as we learn from St. Stephen in the place already cited,) he left Pharaoh's court, and went abroad to

f Exod. iv. 19.

Exod. iv. 14.

h Ver. 24-26.

visit his oppressed brethren, and appeared courageously in vindication of them; thereby declaring, that he had a greater ambition to join himself to the afflicted people of God, than to retain the honour of being the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter; and that he despised the momentary sinful pleasures of that great monarch's palace, and all the riches and treasures that he might have been heir to, if he had continued there; and esteemed it a far greater happiness to be numbered with the poor, afflicted, and despised Israelites, the people of Christ, whom Christ (as the Дóyos, "the Word of God," then, and from eternity existing) took special care of.

For the reproach of the Israelites seems to me to be called "the reproach of Christ," not only for the similitude between it, and that which Christ afterward suffered, or because it was a type thereof, as all the Socinians, and divers otherwise orthodox Divines, herein agreeing with them, have imagined; but also and chiefly because that people was the people of Christ, and so their reproach His. The people of Christ, I say they were, whom Christ took into His singular favour and tuition; appearing to their ancestors the holy Patriarchs; shewing Himself to Moses in the bush, and proclaiming Himself" the God of his fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," and declaring that "He had surely seen the affliction of His people." And afterwards leading the Israelites through the wilderness, as St. Paul himself not obscurely teaches us, and as all the Catholic Doctors and Fathers of the primitive Christian Church have with one consent delivered to us. But this by the way; I proceed.

Now what was the motive that induced Moses to make this strange and wonderful choice? My text tells us, "for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward." For the explaining of which words, the question will be, What was the polaπodooía, "the recompense of the reward," which μισθαποδοσία, Moses had "respect unto?" Grotius understands it to be terram illam excellentem, "that excellent land, the land of Canaan, which was promised to Abraham and his seed." But nothing can be more absurd than this interpretation.

For if this had been the reward that Moses had respect unto,

i Exod. iii. 6, 7.

k 1 Cor. x. 9.

he certainly missed of his aim. For he never set a foot in the land of Canaan, having only seen it afar off from Mount Pisgah, and then presently dying, as we read Deut. xxxiv. 4, 5. Nor did he ever in his life attain any other reward, which he might look on as a reasonable encouragement of those heroic enterprises which he undertook; unless we can imagine the perpetual vexation which he sustained, even for forty years together, in governing a cross, perverse, stiffnecked, and stubborn people in the wilderness, to be itself a desirable reward, and worthy of his ambition. It was therefore a reward in another world that Moses looked and had respect unto. Which is also farther evident from hence, that the divine author sets the reward which Moses aimed at, as it were in balance against that which he terms "the having a temporary enjoyment of sin'," or, as other translators render it, "to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."

In the judgment therefore of this sacred writer, Moses rejected and despised the sinful pleasures of Pharaoh's court upon this consideration, that they were short and transitory; that he could enjoy them but for a while; that he must die, after some years expired, and bid an eternal farewell to them. On the other side, he chose to take his lot and portion with the afflicted people of God, as having "respect to the recompense of the reward," attending the virtuous in the other life, which is not temporary, but eternal. That this is the meaning of the author, every man must presently see, that is not strangely blinded with prejudice.

And that he was not mistaken in thinking that Moses had a knowledge and belief of the future reward, I shall prove by a demonstrative argument taken out of the writings of Moses himself. In the fifth chapter of Genesism, we read, that "Enoch walked with God, and was not; for God took him." Which words, all men that have read them, both Jews and Christians, have always understood of the translation of Enoch (either in his soul only, or in his soul and body together) to heavenly bliss, after a virtuous life spent in this world amongst a wicked and vicious generation of men. He therefore that

1 Πρόσκαιρον ἔχειν ἁμαρτίας ἀπόλαυσιν.

m Ver. 24.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »