377 III. fervants and citizens of God. Other focie, LECT. ties have their proper judges and rulers; but here, God is the judge of all; his law is the rule of judgment, and he rewards and punishes without fear or favour. In the communion of the Church the spirits of juft men made perfect are alfo included. It is a fociety, which admits only the spirits of the living, and as fuch cannot exclude the fpirits of the dead: and this confirms what we said above, that the Church is a spiritual community, comprehending the dead as well as the living: for the best interpretation supposes these to be the spirits of the Martyrs, who had finished their earthly course, and were made perfect through fufferings after the example of their Saviour. The Chriftian Church is here defcribed by the old names, to fhew that it was no new thing, but the fame holy mount of God, the fame heavenly city of God, to which the spiritual part of his people always belonged: and they knew they did fo, because the living God must be the head III. LECT. head of a living fociety. They who were ignorant of its true nature, difputed about the place where the Church ought to be: the Samaritans contended that it was to be on their mountain; the Jews faid it was to be only at Jerusalem: but, as a society of fpirits, it is no where and every where: the true worshippers of God are they who worship him in Spirit and in truth; wherever these are, there is that Jerusalem, which is the mother of us all. * The Church being a society of a spiritual kind, is therefore called by the fame names in all ages: Chriftians are said to be come unto Mount Sion, and Mofes is faid to have been with the Church in the wilderness. The reasonableness of which will be farther evident, if we confider the nature of its vocation it is feparated from the pollutions of the world, and called unto holinefs of life. Ye shall be holy unto me, faid the Lord; for I the Lord am holy, and have fevered you from other people that ye should be John iv. 23. mine.* III. For this end the Hebrews were LECT. placed in a land by themselves, that they might not be corrupted with the ways of the Gentiles. They had laws and customs of their own, all tending to fecure them from the idolatrous worship and wicked manners of the heathens. We Chriftians, who now belong to the Church, are in like manner called out of the world. Our bleffed Saviour, fpeaking of the vocation of his disciples, faith, † They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. But it is now to be fhewn, fecondly, that as the Church of God hath always been the fame in its nature, it hath likewise preferved the fame form in its external œconomy; the wisdom of God having fo ordained, that the Chriftian Church under the gospel should not depart from the model of the Church under the law. For as the congregation of Ifrael was divided into twelve tribes, under the twelve Patriarchs, fo is the Church of Chrift founded on the twelve Apofiles, who raised to themselves a † John xvii. 16. *Lev. xx. 26. fpiritual III. LECT. fpiritual feed amongst all the nations of the world. They all had an equal right, to use the style of St. Paul; who speaks of his converts, as of his children, begotten by him to a new life, through the preaching of the gofpel: fo that he and all the other Apostles are to be confidered as the patriarchal progenitors of the whole Chriftian people. In the new Church we have twelve Apoftles, in the old twelve Patriarchs; but in the heavenly fociety, where both are united, we find four and twenty Elders, feated about the throne of God, as it was fhewn in the fpirit to St. John. There the faints of all ages look to the Lamb that was flain for the falvation of all. By fome he was expected; by others he is commemorated: to thofe he was the end of the law; to these the beginning of the gofpel; but to the general affembly of them all, he is the object of their faith and hope, and the principle of all true religion from the beginning of the world to the end of it; the Redeemer of all times, the the Saviour of all nations. We have reafon to believe, that the Church, even in its glorious and triumphant ftate, shall still be conformed to its primitive divifion ; for Christ affured his apostles, that when the Son of man should fit upon the throne of his glory, they also should fit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Ifrael.* Our Saviour, in choofing the number of those whom he appointed to minister in his Church, was pleased to observe a ftrict conformity to the number of rulers under the law. Befides his twelve apostles, he appointed other Seventy alfo: the number feventy agrees to that of the Elders, who were appointed to affift Mofes in his ministry.† A farther examination will teach us, that the priesthood of the gospel was formed very exactly upon that of the law. Aaron was appointed as an high priest for the fervice of the tabernacle; under whom the fons of Aaron conftituted an inferior See Numb. xi. 16. 25. order * Matth. xix. 28. |