V. LECT. was the inftituted likeness of the feat of the divine glory in the heavens. And in a like vifion of Ifaiah, the throne of God, and the display of his glory, is still present in his temple: I faw the Lord fitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. So, where the fame prophet faith, Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory +; the words habitation and holiness and glory all refer to the earthly fanctuary as a pattern of the heavenly. The tabernacle was alfo a figure of the church of Chrift: and therefore the renovation and establishment of the church amongst the Gentiles by the preaching of the gofpel, is defcribed under the idea of a restoration of the tabernacle which had ceafed from the time of David. The prophet Amos fpeaks of this gathering of the Gentiles into the church of Chrift, as into the tabernacle taken in this new fenfe; and St. James made the proper application of it, when the great question *Ifaiah vi. 1. + Ib. lxiii. 15. was V. was debated concerning the reception of LECT. To this, fays he, agree the the heathens. words of the prophets, as it is written, I will return and will build again the tabernacle of David which is fallen down-that the refidue of men might feek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles upon whom my name is called*. To the fame effect St. Stephen had observed in his apology to the Jews, that the tabernacle had originally been brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles; and therefore the church might reasonably go thither again; whereto the preaching of the gofpel under the true Jefus fhould remove and fettle it. The propriety with which the Christian church is fignified by this name, is too plain to be enlarged upon; inafmuch as we have already seen, that all things are there done in spirit and in truth, which were done in figure in the tabernacle of the law. But the tabernacle, as well as the temple, is farther applied as a figure of the * Acts xv. 6, body LECT. body of Chrift; and this in a paffage not V. open to common obfervation. The word, faith St. John, was made flesh and dwelt among ft us; where the true sense of the original is, he tabernacled amongst us: and then it is added, and we beheld his glory; for where the true tabernacle is, there must be also the glory of it. Here then we have the manifestation of Chrift in the flesh, fignified by the dwelling of God's presence in the tabernacle; than which there can be no higher proof of his divi nity to those that understand the thing in this light. As the glory of the Lord was once present in the tabernacle, it was now prefent in the body of Chrift: and as that glory was faid on occafion to have filled the tabernacle, so it is faid, with reference to the fame, that in him dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Well therefore might he say of his body, deftroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again; for it was both a tabernacle and temple in a stricter fense than had ever been before; the Godhead had occafionally dwelt in the buildings made with hands; but V. but with him it abode continually. The LECT. ufe our Saviour made of this term amounted to an affertion of his Godhead to the Jews; but as the Jews did not then underftand the sense of his expreffion, so are many Chriftians as blind to it at this day. After the pattern of Christ, and according to their proper measure, all christians have the presence of God abiding within them; whence their bodies also are the temples of the Holy Ghoft: from which confideration they are inftructed to dedicate them to the fervice of God; for that is certainly one ufe of a temple; and not to defile them, for that is facrilege. And the fubject gives them this confolation, that though their earthly house of this tabernacle be diffolved, he who raised up the tabernacle of David from its ruins to a more glorious ftate in the Gentile world, and raised up the temple of Chrift's body which the Jews deftroyed, shall in like manner quicken our mortal bodies by the spirit that dwelleth in us, and give us an LECT. an house not made with hands, eternal in the -beavens. It was observed above, that the tabernacle of David is a figurative term for the Christian church as the mystical body of Chrift: we shall likewife find, that the bleffings and privileges of the Chriftian society or affembly of Christian people do all correfpond with the economy of the congregation of Ifrael, and are described in terms borrowed from the law; of which the following example in the epistle to the Hebrews will be fufficient, where the apoftle fays-Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly ferufalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general affembly and church of the first born which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the Spirits of juft men made perfect, and to Jefus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of Sprinkling that Speaketh better things than that of Abel. Every Chriftian is to conceive what his own state is, by looking back to the pri vileges |