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vileges of the church of old. He is come LECT to mount Zion, to a fituation exalted above the world; a mountain chofen and favoured of God, bleffed with the dew of heavenly grace, and inheriting the promise of eternal life; even to that holy hill, on which Chrift is established as King against all the oppofition of the world below. It is the new Jerufalem, because it is ordained to be, as that city was of old, at unity with itself, and a principle of unity to all the land; where all the tribes of the earth unite in one religion, as the tribes of Israel affembled to worship at Jerufalem. The cities of the neighbouring nations were dedicated to fome tutelary idol; Jerufalem alone to the true and living God; fo now is the fame God connected with the Christian city and with that only; and all the company of heaven, innumerable as they are, who affifted at the delivery of the law, are with him. As the first-born of Ifrael, who had the right of inheritance, were redeemed and written down by name; fo are all the children of the Chriftian fociety enrolled in heaven as the first-born

of

LEICT. of God, and the book of life in which they

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are written answers to the register of the

church of Ifrael.

We are come to God

the fudge of all, because we are taken out of the world of the ungodly, who are aliens, to be fubject to his laws, and confequently to be under his government. It

is true that all the world are under the authority of God; but then all are not related to him as citizens and fubjects. In this refpect, God was faid to be nigher to the Jews than to any nation upon earth, because he was with them as their judge and protector. We have our Jefus, as they had their Mofes; both of them mediators, to ftand between God and the people. The Hebrews were not permitted to draw near to God to treat for themselves on pain of death; but Mofes was to be between them, as Chrift is now betwixt us and God, and no man can come to the Father but by him: and in his blood we have remiffion, as all things were purified under the law, and nothing accepted or fanctified without the blood of fprinkling; which speaketh better things than that of Abel;

for

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for the blood of Abel cried for vengeance, LECT. this for mercy and pardon.

Thus is our fociety on like terms with theirs in every respect and to these particulars I may add, that as the congregation of Ifrael on great and folemn occafions was called together by the found of a trumpet, so shall the great affembly of all nations, all the tribes of the earth, and we ourselves among the reft, be fummoned after the fame form: the trumpet fhall found, and the dead Jhall be raised: and then we shall fee with our eyes what that great fociety is, in the which we now live by faith.

There are many particular institutions remaining, fome of a religious, fome of a moral, and others of a civil nature; a few of the most useful of which I must select, and fhew how the fcripture has applied them.

The fabbath, which fucceeds the labours of the week, appears to have been appointed from the beginning as a perpe

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LECT. tual fign, a fign for ever*, of that happy Reft which the fervants of God are to expect after the labours of this life. For thus the apostle hath reafoned about it; that being called the Reft of God, it cannot be of an earthly but must be of an heavenly nature; for God doth not rest upon

earth where men labour. He fhews that the true reft promised to the faithful was not the fabbath that was appointed after God had finished his works; nor yet the state of rest, so called, in the land of Canaan; because the promise is still suspended, and repeated again in the time of David: Whence he concludes that it was a reft never yet fulfilled in this life, but still remaining for the people of God, and into which the faithful enter when they die in the Lord and rest from their labours. I fay no more of this here, because I have confidered the fubject more at large in my lectures on the epiftle to the Hebrews, to which it properly belongs.

Circumcifion was that rite of the law by

* Exodus xxxi. 17.

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which the Ifraelites were taken into God's LECT. covenant; and (in the fpirit of it) was the fame as baptifm among Chriftians. For as the form of baptifm expreffes the putting away of fin; circumcifion was another form to the fame effect. The fcripture fpeaks of a circumcifion made without bands, of which that made with hands was no more than an outward fign, which denoted the putting off the body of the fins of the flesh, and becoming a new creature; which is the fenfe of our baptifm. Of this inward and spiritual grace of circumcifion the apostle fpeaks exprefsly in another place: he is not a few which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcifion which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Few which is one inwardly, and circumcifion is that of the heart, in the fpirit, and not in the letter. Some may suppose that this fpiritual application of circumcifion, as a facrament, was invented after the preaching of the gofpel, when the veil was taken from the law; but this doctrine was only inforced to those who had it before,

* Col. ii. 11.

K 2

† Rom, ii. 28:

and