the testator should intervene, before the LECT. promises of God could descend to his children. So argues the apostle: * for this cause he is the mediator of the New Testament; that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgresions that were under the first Testament (and could not be purged away by the blood of animals) they which are called might receive the promife of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must also of necesity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead--whereupon, neither the first Testament was dedicated without blood. 4. It was also foretold, that there should be a new covenant ; of not such as was made with the fathers when they were brought out of Egypt, which covenant was confined to a particular people; but such as should comprehend all nations, when the spirit of the divine law should be written in the hearts of men, and all * Chap. ix, 15. ^ Chap. viii. 8, &c. A a 3 should II. LECT. should know the Lord from the least to am the greatest. But the old and the new were both contained in the covenant God made with Abraham in the times before the law. In regard to his natural posterity it was said, unto thy feed have I given this land from the river of Eg ypt unto the great river the river Euphrates: this is a temporal promise: but to the same Abraham it was faid, in thy feed mall all the nations of the carth be blefed: this is a spiritual promise, and is the same in all respects with the christian covenant. 5. With regard to temporal things, the servants of God in all ages were instructed to look upon the world, and they actually did look upon it, as we do (or should do) now. Upon a principle of faith in God's promise, they who were called out of Egypt under Moses, set out upon a progress toward a land which they had never seen, and knew only by report ; with many difficulties and terrors to encounter by the way; so that the history of their journey is an instructive picture of all the trials and dangers II. of the christian life: and when they were LECT. * See Chap. xi. . the II. LECT. the world could inflict upon them for the trial of their faith, and ran with patience the race that was set before them, chusing death itself through the hope of a better resurrection : whence the saints of the law are celebrated and set forth as examples of faith and patience to the saints of the gospel. How unaccountable therefore has been the error of some modern divines, such as these days of refinement have produced, who have contended that the law gave no notice of a future life, and that the Jews were taught to look for nothing under it but temporal rewards : a doctrine so false in itself, so injurious to the word of God, and so contrary to the preaching of Christ and his apostles, that it is condemned in the articles of the church of England; the seventh of which affirms, as it ought to do, and as we have sufficientJy proved already, that “ The Old Testament is not contrary to the New; for both in the Old and New Testament, everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Where fore II. fore they are not to be heard, which feign, LECT. that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.” To Thew that they had a better hope, and that their faith was the same as ours, though their worship was of a different form, is the whole design of the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the Christian doctrines are all deduced from the Old Testament. Our Saviour, in his argument against the Sadducees, Math. xxii. 31, shews how the doctrine of a resurrection was taught in that declaration of God to Moses, “ I am the God of Abraham, &c.” and the argument extends to the whole Old Testament: for if God, as the God of Abraham, was the God of the living, and Abraham still lives expecting the resure rection of the just; then the like declaration, wherever it occurs, must yield the same doctrine; for that God should be the God of the dead, is no more consistent with his honour in one part of the scripture than in another. The covenant of God is a covenant of life; and the argument is of equal force whether the relation is applied to those who are in the world or |