Eve in paradise. The followers and friends of Christ are now waiting in expectation of being 'called forth to meet this bridegroom, and join in the glorious procession that shall ascend, under the conduct of a train of angels, to meet the Lord in the air, when he shall return from the wedding with which expectation they are to keep their loins girded up, and their lights burning. Woe be unto the foolish, whose lamps shall be gone out when the cry shall be raised at midnight, behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him.

As the author of our faith, Christ is our master or teacher; and that in so strict a sense, that we are to call no other by that name in comparison of him; much less are we to receive any other form of doctrine, from those who assume a right of teaching on the authority of any other person, or by any other rule, which the fashion of the times or the prejudices of education may have established amongst us.

This relation betwixt the master and the scholar must suggest to every Christian the indispensible duty of knowing the scriptures, and following the precepts of the gospel. For, let us ask ourselves: are we the scholars of Jesus Christ, and are we ignorant of his doctrine? Do we pay no regard to his discipline, and the

rules.

rules he has given for the conduct of life? And shall we not in such a case be disowned and expelled from his society? If we know nothing of him, he will know nothing of us, and will signify the same to us upon an awful occasion -Depart from me, I know you not.

Having thus far shewn how the nature, state, works, offices, and relations of mankind are applied, and how the scripture reasons from them, as from so many parallel cases; I shall now consider what use is made of the inferior part of the animal creation. And here you are to recollect, that beasts differ from one another as men do, the sober from the sottish, the gentle from the ravenous, the trusty from the thievish, the peaceable and obedient from the blood-thirsty and rebellious and as the scripture expresses all things by similitudes, the properties and qualities of beasts are examples of virtues and vices amongst men. This moral difference was the ground of the distinction of beasts under the law of Moses into clean and unclean. The people of God were to eat of no unclean creature; they were to converse with no unclean man; and so the first effect of this law was of a civil nature, to keep the Jews separate from the conversation of other nations, that they might not learn their works. They

could

could not eat with them, and consequently could not keep company with them; and this law has the same effect to this day with the modern Jews. The second intention of it was of a moral or spiritual kind; to suggest a figurative lesson of purity, obedience, and patience, from the various instincts of animals.

Read the 11th chapter of Leviticus, and you will see how the creatures are distinguished. The gentle, tame, and profitable kinds are allowed for food and all creatures of wild, fierce, or filthy manners, are forbidden. Thus the Israelites were reminded daily by what they ate, what manner of persons they ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness; by what was forbidden, they were taught to abhor the vices of the heathen. So saith the law itself: Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations which I cast out before you-I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people; ye shall therefore put a difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean-and ye shall be holy unto me; for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine*. This passage puts the moral intention of the distinction of meats out of dispute, and

* Lev. xx, 23, &c.

is

is indeed a direct affirmation of it: the people of God were to avoid unclean meats, as a sign that he had separated them from unclean Gentiles to be holy unto himself.

But in the fulness of time, when the Gentiles were to be admitted to Christian baptism, and taken into the church with the Jews, this act of grace in the divine œconomy was signified to St. Peter, by a new licence to feed upon unclean beasts. The case was this: Peter was about to be invited to preach the gospel to Cornelius a Roman, into whose house he could not come; because the law which he had always observed commanded the Jews to keep themselves separate from heathens in their conversation; as, in their diet, they abstained from unclean beasts.

While this matter was depending, Peter fell into a trance, and saw a vision. A great sheet, knit at the four corners, was let down to the earth, containing all those living creatures which were forbidden food by the Levitical law, and he was commanded to kill and eat: to which, when he objected, as being contrary to the law, a voice said, what God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. The message from Cornelius which immediately followed, shewed the design of this vision; that it sig

VOL. IV.

F

nified

nified the reception and cleansing of the Gen

tile world, and that the Jews were no longer to count them unclean. So Peter himself thus explained it when he visited Cornelius: Fe know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore those living creatures of all kinds, which had been presented to him in the vision, were the people of all nations; the linen sheet which contained them signified their sanctification by the gospel; and it was knit at four corners, to shew that they were gathered together from the four quarters of the world, and brought into the church.

Nothing more need be said to prove that the distinctions amongst men were figuratively expressed under the law by a distinction amongst beasts and birds and all living creatures. In the subtilty of the fox, the fierceness of the tyger, the filthiness of the swine, the impu dence of the dog, you see, as in a glass, the manners of those idolatrous nations, from whom the Jews were separated. In the gentleness of the sheep, the integrity of the labouring ox, the innocence and profitableness of other tame creatures fit for food, you see the virtues of an

Israelite