the Canaanitish nations, who possessed the land promised to the people of God, were all Idolaters, or Gentiles as they are called, such as the Roman empire and all the kingdoms of the world were before the establishment of Christianity. This circumstance is taken notice of and applied in the apology of St. Stephen against the Jews. Our fathers, said he, had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness-which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles. The tabernacle of God was transferred to the Gentiles, and there established under Joshua; to signify in a figure, that the church, under Jesus Christ, should be transferred from the Jews to the Gentiles. The first set of people who came out of Egypt, rebelled against Moses, and refused to hear the exhortation of Joshua: so they died in their unbelief, and their carcases were left in the wilderness. But those who came after (as St. Stephen words it) the successors of that disobedient generation, entered with the tabernacle into the possession of the Gentiles; as the new children of Abraham, who came after the apostate Jews, followed the true Jesus, when his religion was translated into the heathen world.

The time is yet to be expected, when every

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of this world and the other shall fall bepower fore him. As those wicked Canaanites were driven out of their land, when the measure of their iniquities was filled up; so shall the wicked be driven out of the earth, when that vengeance of God shall overtake them, which they have so long held in contempt and defiThe world itself shall be surrounded by the Son of God, as the Captain of our Salvation, and the army of saints and angels which shall attend upon him at his coming. The last trumpet shall sound, and the world shall be overthrown, as Jericho fell flat, when it had been compassed about seven days by the priests and ministers of God. When the priests blew, as they were commanded, at the time appointed, and all the people shouted with a great shout, (Josh. vi. 5.) the fortifications of that proud city sunk at once into a heap of ruins. With reference to which history, we are reminded that the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout (1 Thess. iv. 16.) with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God.

It pleased the wisdom of God to describe beforehand, in the manner I have now explained to you from the Old Testament, the things relating to the person of the Son of God, as our Lawgiver, our High Priest, and our Saviour;

with the works he was to perform for the redemption of mankind. Wonder not that they were all so particularly delineated by ceremonies, signs, and miracles. They are so great and important, that had they been written in the firmament of heaven as plainly as they are written in the books of Moses and the Prophets, they would have been worthy of it.

LECT.

LECTURE II.

THE RELIGION AND FAITH OF THE PEOPLE

OF GOD, THE SAME (IN SUBSTANCE) UNDER

BOTH TESTAMENTS.

THE nature of man being the same now sa from the beginning of the world, and the nature of God being unchangeable; it must follow, that the great object of the dispensations of God to man must be the same in every age; though the form and manner after which that object is pursued may be different; so that what God spake in former times to the fathers by the prophets will be found the same in sense and effect with what he spoke in the last days by his Son; though he spoke in divers manners, as occasion might require at sundry times. This is a matter of the utmost consequence; and it is what I propose to shew you in the present lecture;

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lecture; namely, that it was the design of St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, to teach them that the religion of the people of God is, for substance and intention, the same under both Testaments.

This I shall prove from two general reasons, and afterwards from some particular ones.

My first general reason is this; that religion has the same name under the two. dispensations of Moses and of Jesus Christ: it is called the Gospel: for the apostle, speaking of those who were under the teaching of God in the wilderness, says, unto us was the Gospel preached as well as unto them*; making the religion, delivered to us in the New Testament, but a repetition of what had always been delivered to the Church. The Gospel signifies a message from God for the salvation of man; and as such was delivered at sundry times by Moses and the phets. If the word preached did not profit some, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it, this is no argument against the sense or sufficiency of the word itself; it only shews us, that, in all ages of the world, some there have been and will be, who being carnally minded, and wholly attached to this world, are destitute of that principle, which the scripture calls

* Heb. iv. 2.

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