Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

tion of their children, as members of the church with them. Similar representations are frequent in the prophetic writings.

The words of our Saviour, in 10th chap. of John, are full to our purpose. Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring.' I must bring them into this fold, the Jewish church; for what other fold was there then existing? And they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.'

The apostle Peter, exhorting the Jews to repentance, points them to the Saviour, whom the prophets foretold, and says, ' Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant, which God made with our fathers, saying, In thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed; unto you first God hath raised up his son, and sent him to bless you.'

Paul, in the epistle to the Ephesians, treats explicitly on this subject. He says, Ye were once afar off, without Christ, aliens from the Commonwealth' of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise. But now in Christ ye are made nigh. Christ

Acts.

is our peace, who hath made both one ;' i. e. hath united both Jews and Gentiles. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone. The prophets and apostles laid the same foundation. The prophets foretold a Saviour to come; the apostles preached this Saviour already come. The predictions of the former, and the doctrines of the latter are the same foundation, the corner stone of which is Christ himself. The apostle adds, "Ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.'

[ocr errors]

The Jews, who were baptized on the day of pentecost, believed that Jesus was Lord and Christ, on evidence derived from the prophets; and were admitted to baptism on the foot of the promise made to their fathers. The same promise, which was the foundation of the ancient church, and of which cir

cumcision was the seal, is alleged by the apostle, as a reason for the baptism of these Christian Jews and their children, and as many as God should call from among the Gentiles. The christian church here stands on the old foundation; and to this church were added those who afterwards were baptized.

In the 11th chap. to the Romans, the apostle expressly declares, that the Gentile believers are grafted into the same olive tree, from which some of the Jews, the natural branches, were broken off by unbelief. If some of the branches, were broken off, and thou, being a wild olive, wert grafted in among them,' the branches that remained, ' and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches; for thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. They were broken off by unbelief, and thou standest the faith.' It is the same root, which beareth the natural, and the ingrafted branches. Some of the natural branches were broken off-not all.→→ The believing Jews continued still in the same old stock, in which they had before

stood, and in which believing Gentiles were ingrafted. The Gentiles were not inserted into a new stock, a tree lately grown up; nor were believing Jews lopt off from the old tree to be inserted with Gentiles into a new one; but the former remained in the old stock, and the latter were grafted in among them, to partake with them of the root and fatness of the same olive, which had formerly nourished them. And it is observable, that those Jews, who immediately and readily submitted to the gospel, on its being proposed to them, seem not generally, if in any instance, to have received christian baptism. Heathens and Samaritans, who were not of the church of God, and those Jews, who by obstinate unbelief, and open opposition to the gospel, had broken themselves off from the church, were on their professed repentance, baptized. The other continued in God's covenant and church. This thought we shall have occasion to resume hereafter. When the unbelieving Jews, shall, in the latter days, turn to the Lord, they shall be grafted again-into what? Another tree? No; into THEIR OWN olive tree; for the cov

enant which God made with their fathers, is the same, which he will make with them in the latter days, when he shall take away their sins.

We have now an obvious answer to a question, which our brethren often put to us. If the children of believers are subjects of the covenant seal under the gospel, as they were under former dispensations, why have we not some direct, positive institution, which might have prevented all controversy ¿

The fact is, the gospel found the children of God's people already in covenant by virtue of the ancient institution; and a new institution of that, which had been plainly instituted before, and was not then so much as questioned, would have been superfluous; not to say, absurd. The gospel has made it as plain as language can make any thing, that the ancient covenant with Abraham is still continued; and if children were, by divine command, to receive the seal of the covenant formerly, they are to receive it still, unless the command is somewhere in the gospel expressly revoked. We need no new

« AnteriorContinuar »