dred thousand men, besides women and children. Exod. xii. 37. and Numb. i. 46. Jacob died in Egypt, and was carried out of it into Canaan, and buried with Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, and Leah, at Machpelah. This was a solemn testification of their faith in the promise that their posterity should inherit the land of Canaan; and also of their own belief of their interest and part in the resurrection of the just.

The twelve sons of Jacob, who were heads of twelve distinct tribes, to whom the promise of Christ belonged, though but one of them could have the honor of producing him, returned into Egypt after they had buried their father, and remained there with their posterity. Joseph seems to have been the first of them who was removed out of the world by death. From the renewal of the world after the waters of the deluge, to the death of Joseph, was seven hundred and thirteen years. It was from the creation of the world two thousand three hundred and sixtynine years. Levi, Jacob's third son, was the next who died after Joseph, who was one hundred and ten years old, and Levi one hundred and thirty

seven.

When all the patriarchs were fallen asleep by death, their seed fell into idolatry, and neglected circumcision, which the Lord visited for, by permitting a new king of Egypt most grievously to afflict them, by a most severe edict, commanding

them to drown all their male children immediately on their birth. Moses was born, in the year of the world, according to Ainsworth, two thousand four hundred and thirty-two; he was the son of Amram, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the sou of Abraham, in the seventh generation, as Enoch was the seventh generation from Adam. A divine beauty appeared in his form at his birth, so that his parents secreted him from being destroyed by those who, according to the orders of the king of Egypt, were to search out and destroy all the male children born to the Israelites. When his parents could no longer hide him in their own house with safety, an ark of bulrushes, which was daubed with slime and pitch, to keep out the water, was prepared, and in it the infant was put, and it was placed among flags or rushes on the brink of the river Nile. Pharaoh's daughter was the instrument of preserving his life: she gave him the name Moses, because, said she, “I drew him out of the waters;" his own mother nursed him, after which he was brought up in Pharaoh's court, where he lived forty years, and was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in word and in deed. From the death of Jacob to the death of Joseph, was fifty-three years; and from the death of Joseph in Egypt, to the birth of Moses, was seventy-five years.

Now as Jacob lived seventeen years in Egypt, and gave doubtless a very particular account of the original promise of the Messiah, that he was to be the seed and son of Abraham; and that it had also, with all contained in the promise of the land of Canaan, and a numerous seed, been expressly delivered to his father Isaac, who had conferred these promises to him, all which the Lord himself had repeated, and applied to him, and he was full of joy at the prospect of it ou his death bed, and spoke most fully and clearly of Christ: so this was well known to the twelve patriarchs. Joseph, therefore, when he died, expressed his full belief of it, saying, Lo, I die, and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land into the land which he sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob;" and commanded that his bones should be carried into the land of Canaan. And Stephen tells us, Acts vii. 15, 16. that all the rest of the patriarchs were removed after their death, and buried in Sychem, in the land of promise, which evidently proves that they were believers in Jesus, that they died in him, and to shew how firmly they believed the accomplishment of the promise of their seed inheriting it in due season, and also their earnest desire to partake in the benefit of Christ's resurrection, they were anxious to be interred in Canaan. These things were kept in remembrance by the church which they left behind,

who had full proof of God's faithfulness to his promise concerning making them very fruitful and numerous. This they saw evidently to be the case. And as Moses had his own mother for his nurse, she and her partner being both believers in Christ Jesus, doubtless found means, as their son grew up, to inform him of his relation to them, of his being an Israelite, of the glory and honor which belonged to them, and that the Messiah, in whom all nations were to be blessed, was to come of them; and the scriptures give us warrant to conceive all this to be the case, for the apostle, speaking of Moses, says, "By faith Moses when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward." Heb. xi. 24–26. And in the chapter before this, out of which I have selected my text, we are informed, that seeing an Hebrew, one of his brethren, insulted by an Egyptian, he took part with the Israelite, and slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand; he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them, but they understood not, which appeared when the next day two of them striving with each other, he endea

vored to reconcile them, but they were so far from accepting his mediation, that one of them reproached him with the death of the Egyptian the day before. This put him upon leaving Egypt, where he had lived forty years, and he fled into the land of Midian, where he married, begat two sons, and lived there also the term of forty years. Now it is very easy to conceive, that he was well acquainted with the several manifestations of the co-equal and co-eternal Three to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that he knew the covenant of the Trinity, and rested thereon for his eternal salvation; and that he well knew the time for the deliverance of the Lord's people drew nigh.

The church in Egypt was now sorely persecuted and distressed; it looks as though their bondage began a little before his birth, and it had lasted now fourscore years. The name of the king under whom it began, is thought to be Orus II. the Busirus of the Grecians. He was the bloody tyraut who commanded the male children of Israel to be slain. When Moses had been an exile forty years, this king, who oppressed the Israelites, and all those who sought the life of Moses died; yet though the king was dead, their bondage ceased not, so that they sighed and groaned exceedingly under it, and the Lord had respect unto them, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. He had assured Abraham, that although