whom God drave out before and the victories of the the face of our fathers." The doctrine, of all others most unacceptable and odious to a Jew, was this of the translation of the tabernacle of God to the gentiles. St. Stephen therefore does not literally affirm it, but covertly, and, as a prophet should do, under the shadow of that ancient history which was intended to foreshew it. The Jewish Church derived much danger from its situation among the Canaanites; for though God had driven them out as possessors, and established His own people in their land, He left some of the former possessors to be thorns in their sides for trial and punishment: and their history shews how often they were ensnared by the abominable doctrines of idolatry, until the captivity of Babylon was the reward of their apostacy. people of God against all the armaments and confederacies of their enemies. But not less wonderful was the establishment of Christianity amongst the gentiles. Heathenism was in as full and quiet possession of the world and its empire at the coming of Christ, as the Canaanites were in their own land when Joshua entered it. But the voice of the gospel preached by a few fishermen from among the Jews, a people held in the utmost contempt by the whole heathen world, soon cast down all the highest fences of Satan's kingdom, as the walls of Jericho fell down at the sound of rams' horns blown by priests. As the Hebrews in the progress of their victories were exhorted to fear nothing, remembering how Pharaoh had been subdued in Egypt; so ought Christians to remember daily, how God reduced the power of Satan all over the heathen world, till his • Acts vii. 14, 15. Wonderful was the settlement of the Jews in Canaan, with the fall of Jericho, temples were destroyed, and the Churches of Christ were placed upon their ruins. But then, as there was a remnant of the Canaanites, to whom the people were frequently joining themselves in marriage, and consequently relapsing into idolatry, according to that of the Psalmist "They did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among the heathen and learned their works, and they served their idols, which were a snare unto them:" so the works of heathen authors, with the fables of their false gods, the abominable rites of their religion, and the obscenity and immorality of their practices, are in like manner remaining among Christians; and it has been the custom for ages, all over Europe, to communicate the rudiments of languages and learning to young minds from heathen books, without due care to caution them against imbibing heathen principles; by which thousands of minds are corrupted, and through early prejudice rendered incapable of understanding the value of truth, and the abominable nature of heathen error. How frequently are heathen moralists applied to, when the finest rules of human prudence for the conduct of life are to be found in the Scripture. But to go to the heathens for divinity, as some authors do, is intolerable. They blow out the candle of revelation, and then go raking into the embers of paganism to light it again. Many good and learned men, of the first ability and taste, have observed and lamented the bondage we are under to heathen modes of education: but custom is a tyrant 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 mis f Psalm cvi. 34-36. carriages. This is the great | differ in form: so that we use we are to make of our present subject. The dangers to the souls of men are the same in all ages; and their errors are the same for sense, however they may cannot be surprised and ensnared by any temptation that comes upon the Church, if we look to the things that are past. LECTURE VIII. ON THE PERSONAL FIGURES, OR TYPES, OF THE SCRIP- THE Scripture would | buchadnezzar, and his temhave supplied us with much porary banishment amongst more matter, of the same the beasts in a state of kind with that in the two insanity, till the times of preceding Lectures. I might judgment passed over him. have set before you the The grace of God to the histories of Gideon's vic- heathen world, in admitting tory, and the fall of Sisera; them to the salvation of which were signs of the the gospel, might have been spiritual victories of the exemplified by the healing Church over the enemies of of Naaman the Syrian, and her salvation". I might the visitation of the widow have considered the rejec- of Sarepta: which two cases tion of the Jews, as it was our Saviour pointed out to prefigured in the histories the Jews at Nazareth; but of Cain and Abel, of Jacob they would not bear the and Esau, of Isaac and Ish- most distant hint of the mael, of Ephraim and Ma- reception of the gentiles; nasses; to which I might and were so filled with have added a view of their wrath, that they would have present state, as signified thrown Him down headby the fall of the proud Ne- | long from the brow of an a See Isaiah ix. 4; Psalm lxxxiii. 9. ! ON THE FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE &C. hill, (after the Roman fashion,) as an enemy to His country; for so 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 circumstantials of the history of the gospel by those who read it with such an intention. In short, the history of the Old and New Testaments hath a secondary or prophetical sense in many instances: its great events were signs and figures of "things not seen as yet ;" and many of them are in force as such 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 sacred history. God shall descend, and the earth shall be on fire, and the trumpet shall sound, and the tribes of mankind shall be assembled, as formerly at Horeb. Distress shall come upon a wicked world, when its iniquity shall be 117 full, as once upon Babylon, and afterwards upon the apostate Jerusalem. The armies of the Lord shall encompass it; and it shall be overthrown, with them that dwell therein. For this reason, the visitation of Jerusalem was foretold in such terms by our blessed Lord, that in many of His expressions it is hard to distinguish, whether that, or the end of the world, is to be understood. These things, however, I must at present leave to your meditation, and go forward to the figurative histories of individual persons; such as were the prophets, kings, heroes, and saints of the Old Testament; who by their actions, as well as their words, foreshewed the coming of that Saviour, in Whom, the Saint made perfect through sufferings, the Conqueror, the Prince, the Priest, and the Prophet, were to be united. As the things which befel the Church at large, happened to them b Luke iv. 29. |