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DISCOURSE XV.

ON THE TWENTY-NINTH OF MAY.

PSALM LXXXVII, 2.

The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.

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HEN we take a view of the re- DISC. volutions that have happened in

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the kingdoms of the world, and behold

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Equidem paradoxum quid dixero; et nihilominus vere : Imperia omnia mundi fecundum Dei Providentiam fic fuiffe ordinata, ut fubfervirent confilio Dei erga ecclefiam, nec eorum diffolutionem aut deftructionem alio referendam ; ut proinde eorum deftructio, qualis fuit Perfarum, certo fuerit argumentum, illud non fatisfeciffe confilio Dei erga ecclefiam; nec populum fuum ea æquitate, justitia, et indulgentia tractaffe, qua par erat.

VITRINGA Comment. in Zach. i. 20. 203.
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DISC. mighty empires fucceffively rifing and difappearing again, like fo many waves in this great and wide fea, where, exalted for a little season to the highest pitch of grandeur, they glitter in the funfhine of prosperity, till they are overwhelmed and absorbed by the growing power of fome neighbouring people, who themselves are scarcely gazed at, before they depart and give way to others, as others did to them, we are led thereby to admire and adore the providence of him who ruleth in the kingdoms of men, who putteth down one and fetteth up another, ordering all things according to the counsel of his own will. But when from the Scriptures of truth we learn what the counsel of that will is, and how gracious an aspect it bears towards the servants of the true GOD; when we fee all things, even the moft untractable, working together for good to them that believe, and the powers of the earth made fubfervient to the kingdom of the Meffiah, in carrying on the divine difpenfations of mercy and judgment towards the church, as her obedience pleads

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pleads for the one, or her tranfgreffions call DISC. for the other, how are our hearts filled and warmed with a fenfe of his goodness, who makes the world and all the perfons and things in it confpire to promote the felicity of his chofen, who governs the universe as head of his church, who loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob!

It shall be my endeavour, in the following discourse, to set before you a fuccinct view of the divine œconomy in the government of the world, confidered in this light, viz. as relative to the affairs of the church. The mercies we this day commemorate will close an induction of particulars, and the use we are to make of them be the natural and obvious refult of the whole.

But shall we not be faid to aggrandize the church, to think of her more highly than we ought to think, when we thus reprefent the kings of the earth as miniftering unto her, and put all things as it were under her feet? This may be faid. But

DISC. it will be faid by none who have duly XV. weighed the difference between things temporal and things eternal, and have learned to give the preference where it is so evidently due. The commiffion of political government extends no farther than this world. Every man's death diffolves his relation to an earthly kingdom, and all civil diftinctions drop into the duft together. But, as fays the Apostle, nuwv woditevμa, "our citizenship is in heaven," from whence St. John faw the Christian Church, "that

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holy city, the new Jerufalem, defcend," and whither she will again be received up, nay, whither she is continually afcending, the triumphant part of her, as well as her all-glorious head, being there already. Hence it is, that the church even upon earth is ftyled "the kingdom of GOD;" the spirits departed and the faithful who remain being alike the fubjects of it, and together making up what the Apostle calls the whole family of heaven and earth named after Chrift; who, as he now ratifies in heaven the fentence of the church

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when justly inflicted on earth, fo will he DISC. one day enable her to "execute judgment" on the angels as well as on this world, seeing her head is Lord of them all. They are not "members of his body, of his flesh, "and of his bones; for he took not on him "the nature of angels, but he took on him "the feed of Abraham;" to whom they are "all ministering fpirits, fent forth to "minister to them who," through the faith of their father Abraham, "are heirs "of falvation." What wonder then that we find thefe exceeding great and precious promises made to the church, with relation to the kingdoms of the earth:-" Kings "shall be thy nurfing fathers, and queens

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thy nurfing mothers; they fhall bow "down to thee with their face towards the "earth, and lick up the duft of thy feet. "The fons alfo of them that afflicted thee "shall come bending unto thee, and all

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they that despised thee shall bow them"felves down at the foles of thy feet, and they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the "Zion of the holy one of Ifrael. Therefore "thy

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