the beginning, and in referve to be made LECT. manifest to the world in the latter days. This argument, clear and irresistible as it certainly is, will one day appear to the Jews as it does to us; when the fcales of blindness shall fall from their eyes and then it may be thought the greatest wonder of all, that they who had the old teftament in their hands for eighteen hundred years, should never have seen the use of it before. V. LECTURE VI. ON THE FIGURES OF THE SCRIPTURES WHICH ARE BORROWED FROM THE EVENTS OF THE SACRED HISTORY. LECT. T HE Scripture is the authentic hif tory of God's Providence ever fince man had a being; and in the conduct of God's Providence toward man, there is an uniformity of design, which hath proceeded according to the fame laws of eternal justice and wisdom in all ages of the world: from which confideration it follows, that what God did in times past was an earnest, a pattern, and a fign, of what he might be expected to do in times to come. The godly were delivered, the wicked punished, the proud abased, the humble exalted, under like circumstances and after like forms at different periods of time. Thus it hath been, and thus it will be: VI. be: therefore things paft are referred to LECT. in the scripture as figures of things to come, and fo the history of the bible becomes a chain of prophecy, and is actually applied as fuch by the fcripture itself; as we shall fee from a variety of examples. I reckon two forts of historical figures, the one general, the other particular; the former being references to the history of places, and of fuch events as related to a people at large, or even to the whole world; the latter refering us to the lives, actions, fufferings and fucceffes of individual perfons. Thus the faints of old were prophetical in their actions as well as in their words of which fome ftriking examples will occur to us as we proceed, One of the most early and memorable events of the Scripture is that of the destruction of the world by the Flood; from which Noah and his family were faved in an Ark, supported by those fame waters which deftroyod the world of the ungodly, This hiftory of the Salvation of Noah is applied L3 VI. LECT applied by St. Peter as a figure of that Salvation which we now obtain as the family of Jefus Chrift in the Ark of the Church by the waters of Baptifm: the long Suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is eight fouls were faved by water. A like figure whereunto, even Baptifm doth now fave us by the Refurrection of Fefus Christ. By which it is to be understood, that the falvation of Chriftians by Jefus Chrift, and the falvation of Noah's family, are two events of the like form and figure; the former a fign of the latter. And a wonderful fign it was, if we look into the particulars. Here was a judgement which extended to a whole world; a condemnation that paffed upon all, except those who were of the family of Noah as the wrath of God and a future judgment upon fin, to be executed by fire, is denounced against all mankind, except thofe who fhall belong to the family of Jefus Chrift. As an Ark was prepared by Noah, fo hath Chrift prepared his Church, 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21. to VI. to conduct us in fafety through the waves LECT. The confufion of tongues, with the L 4 dif H |