modes of education: but cuftom is a ty- LECT rant which hears no reason. However,

there can be no harm, and I hope there will be no offence, in praying that God will enable us to correct all our errors from the history of past miscarriages. This is the great use we are to make of our prefent fubject. The dangers to the fouls of men. are the fame in all ages; and their errors are the fame for fenfe, however they may differ in form: fo that we cannot be furprised and ensnared by any temptation that comes upon the church, if we look to the things that are past.

VII.

LECTURE VIII.

ON THE PERSONAL FIGURES, OR TYPES, OF
THE SCRIPTURES; PARTICULARLY THOSE
OF MOSES AND JOSEPH, PROPOSED BY ST..
STEPHEN, IN HIS APOLOGY TO THE JEWS.

LECT.

VIII.

ΤΗ

HE Scripture would have fupplied us with much more matter, of the fame kind with that in the two preceding lectures. I might have fet before you the hiftories of Gideon's victory, and the fall of Sifera; which were figns of the spiritual victories of the church over the enemies of her falvation*. I might have confidered the rejection of the Jews, as it was prefigured in the hiftories of Cain and Abel, of Jacob and Efau, of Ifaac and Ishmael, of Ephraim and Manafes: to which I might have added a view of their * See Ifaiah ix. 4. Pfalm lxxxiii. 9.

"

prefent

VIII.

prefent ftate, as fignified by the fall of the LECT. proud Nebuchadnezzar, and his temporary banishment amongst the beasts in a state of infanity, till the times of judgment paffed over him. The grace of God to the beathen world, in admitting them to the falvation of the gofpel, might have been exemplified by the healing of Naaman the Syrian, and the vifitation of the widow of Sarepta: which two cafes our Saviour pointed out to the Jews at Nazareth; but they would not bear the most diftant hint of the reception of the Gentiles; and were fo filled with wrath, that they would have thrown him down headlong from the brow of an hill, (after the Roman fashion) as an enemy to his country; for fo were traitors punished at Rome, by being thrown from the top of the Tarpeian Rock,

Many figures are to be found in the occurrences and circumftantials of the hiftory of the gospel by those who read it with such an intention. In short, the hiftory of the Old and New Testaments hath 0 4 a fecondary

LECT. a fecondary or prophetical fenfe in many VIII. inftances its great events were signs and

figures of things not feen as yet; and many of them are in force as fuch to this hour. Great things are still to be expected, of which we can form no conception, but as they are set before us in the figures of the facred hiftory. God fhall defcend, and the earth fhall be on fire, and the trumpet fhall found, and the tribes of mankind fhall be affembled, as formerly at Horeb. Diftrefs fhall come upon a wicked world, when its iniquity fhall be full, as once upon Babylon, and afterwards upon the apoftate Jerufalem. The armies of the Lord fhall encompafs it; and it fhall be overthrown, with them that dwell therein. For this reason, the visitation of Jerufalem was foretold in fuch terms by our Bleffed Lord, that in many of his expreffions it is hard to distinguish, whether that, or the end of the world, is to be understood.

These things, however, I muft at prefent leave to your meditation, and go forward to the figurative hiftories of individual perfons;

VIII.

persons; such as were the prophets, kings, LECT. heroes, and faints of the old teftament; who by their actions, as well as their words, forefhewed the coming of that Saviour, in whom, the faint made perfect through fufferings, the conqueror, the prince, the priest, and the prophet, were to be united. As the things which befell the church at large, happened to them for enfamples to the whole congregation of Chriftian people; fo the things which befell the prophets of old happened for enfamples of the Saviour himself; that his character and history, as the true Son of God who should come into the world, might be infallibly afcertained and demonftrated, by a comparifon with the various characters of those who had been moft eminent in the church of old. Some of thefe characters were extremely different from others, and the events of their hiftory very unlike; but the character and history of the Meffiah was to comprehend them all. For this end their lives were purposely conformed by the divine Providence to the image of him that was to come after.