PREFACE.

INASMUCH as our first parents, as individuals, were subject, through the wiles of the enemy, to a departure from the purity of the condition in which they were created, so it will be admitted by all true believers, who have been conversant with sacred and profane history, that throughout every generation of their descendants, men have been liable, through the same beguiling influence, to fall from a better to a worse condition.

Hence it follows, that as all religious associations are made up of individuals, that all such bodies of men are exposed to the same danger of a declension; and for this reason it undoubtedly was, that the Lord God of Israel, through his servants Moses and Joshua, labored abundantly with his chosen people in exhorting them to a continuance of fidelity and obedience, in the keeping of his covenant with them, and commands to them-warning them against a lapsed condition, and assuring them of his judgments and indignation that must surely follow a departure from his commands. And thus we see that their future safety and preservation, consisted not in his having once chosen them

from amongst all the families of the earth with whom to place his name, but in their continuing to keep a single eye to the pattern which he had showed them in the mount.

He had done wonders for them in delivering them from bondage,-—he had brought them out with a high hand and an out-stretched arm, and had established his covenant with them as his peculiar church and people, and therefore required faithfulness at their hands, answerable to the favours which he had bestowed upon them.

He had required them to love him, and to do justice, righteousness and judgment in all things, throughout their generations-to abstain from idolatry, and from all the evils against which he had warned them : he had prohibited them from mixing with the surrounding nations in their ways and manners of devotion-to come out from among them, and to be separate from them.

Notwithstanding some of those nations believed in the same God in whom they believed, and held and practised some rites in common with them, and coincided with certain things which he had commanded them, such as their altars, their sacrifices, and their priest's services in offering upon them-rites which had been handed down from the first ages of time; figurative and prophetic of that most acceptable sacrifice of the Saviour of men, for the blotting out of the sins of all men, on condition of true repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yet, as the practices of those nations were in many essential points diverse and not according to the covenant which he had made with his Israel, and tended to

idolatry and the serving of other gods; his people were therefore strictly forbidden to mingle with them; not because there were no sincere people among those nations, but because their ways were not in accordance with the pattern shown to Israel in the mount.

We find by following the history of this once favored and chosen people, and beholding, as we do, their gross departure from God's covenant, abundant evidence to show the necessity there was of warning them in the outset against an apostacy, and no less of his mercy in continuing from age to age to send his prophets and messengers unto them, to testify against the forsaking of his law, lest his statutes should be altogether disregarded and trodden down by them.

But, alas! how many sufferings, reproaches and persecutions these his messengers had to endure, from the hands of those who had departed from the Lord's testimonies, because of their faithfulness to him. On the other hand, how many of those called prophets were induced by bribery, were lured by the love, and driven by the fear of man, to prophecy smooth things -to flatter those in power, and to cry peace, peace! when there was no peace. How many and unsparing were the gifts and honors bestowed upon men by those in power, for the strengthening of their own hands in iniquity, and for working devices against the Lord and his faithful servants!

But blessed be the Lord, a faithful remnant there

was, (among the many hundreds that were called pro

phets,) who feared the Lord, that could neither be bought nor driven to forego the word of the Lord, nor to baulk his testimonies to please men. But an apostacy had so prevailed over the rulers of Israel in

that day, that many of the prophets were persecuted and slain for their constancy and faithfulness to their Lord and Master. The rulers of the people had become so lost to all that was good, that they took light for darkness, and darkness for light, and so persecuted the Lord's true messengers.

But a reformation-a better day and a better covenant was seen to be coming, and was foretold by those persecuted messengers. And however long the darkness of that apostacy prevailed-however long the coming of a better day was protracted, it was not deferred until human nature had ceased to be human nature in the fall-a condition from which the Gospel power is only able ever to redeem; but this redemption is effected only upon the condition of faith and obedience, so essential under the former dispensation, and without which fallen nature has been the same in every age, is abundantly evinced by the grievous lapse which has befallen the church under both covenants.

Thus we see, however better the day, that without the obedience of faith, fallen nature, or the natural man, is the same, and no better under this than under the former dispensation. And those who are favored with the New Testament, and do not live in conformity with its precepts, and come to experience the power of that religion which it inculcates, are even more reprehensible than those under the former covenant; of whom many, with less outward advantage, came to witness in an eminent degree, that which was then, as now, the power of God unto salvation.

By the events which have transpired, it would seem that the same liability of departing from the law of the Lord which existed in the Jewish Church, exists in the

Christian Church, and that individuals, as well as bodies of Christians, are as liable to degenerate through disobedience and unfaithfulness to the commands of Christ, as were those under the former covenant; inasmuch as the temptations of the old enemy are as artfully directed against the Chrstian as against the Jewish Church, and only detected by abiding in Him who is the Light of the world, and the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

The lapse of the Lord's people, under the former covenant, is strikingly observable in the lamentation over them: "Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?"Jer. ii. 21.

But to mark the consummation of the declension and final apostacy of the Jewish Church, we must refer to the time when Jesus Christ came into the world, and call to mind the great enmity and bitterness which the whole sanhedrim and rulers of that body betrayed; their madness against Him and His doctrines, His ministry and mighty works.

They denied Him and his mission, although Moses, in whom they trusted, had spoken so plainly of him,they made and spread abroad among the people, all manner of false reports and wicked accusations against him; and made a decree that any one who confessed him to be the Christ should be put out of the synagogue; and their influence and the fear of them,the bribery, the friendship and other means to which they resorted, succeeded to an astonishing degree in bringing the Saviour of men into great disrepute among the people; and even made the Jewish nation