creases, our faith will grow stronger. Thus the law serves for evidence both to the Jew and Gentile; and the same schoolmaster, which should have brought them to Christ, will keep us with him. For, did the apostle in his preaching say nothing but what Moses had said? And did the gospel teach nothing but what the law had signified long before? Then must the gospel be that very salvation, which was known to God from the beginning, and in reserve to be made manifest to the world in the latter days.

be

This argument, clear and irresistible as it certainly is, will one day appear to the Jews as it does to us; when the scales of blindness shall fall from their eyes: and then it may thought the greatest wonder of all, that they who had the old testament in their hands for eighteen hundred years, should never have seen the use of it before.

LECT.

LECTURE VI.

ON THE FIGURES OF THE SCRIPTURES WHICH ARE BORROWED FROM THE EVENTS OF THE SACRED HISTORY.

THE Scripture is the authentic history of

God's Providence ever since man had a being; and in the conduct of God's Providence toward man, there is an uniformity of design, which hath proceeded according to the same laws of eternal justice and wisdom in all ages of the world: from which consideration it follows, that what God did in times past was an earnest, a pattern, and a sign, of what he might be expected to do in times to come. The godly were delivered, the wicked punished, the proud abased, the humble exalted, under like circumstances and after like forms at different

periods

periods of time. Thus it hath been, and thus it will be therefore things past are referred to in the scripture as figures of things to come, and so the history of the bible becomes a chain. of prophecy, and is actually applied as such by the scripture itself; as we shall see from a variety of examples.

I reckon two sorts of historical figures, the one general, the other particular; the former being references to the history of places, and of such events as related to a people at large, or even to the whole world; the latter referring us to the lives, actions, sufferings and successes of individual persons. Thus the saints of old were prophetical in their actions as well as in their words of which some striking examples will occur to us as we proceed.

One of the most early and memorable events of the Scripture is that of the destruction of the world by the Flood; from which Noah and his family were saved in an Ark, supported by those same waters which destroyed the world of the ungodly. This history of the Salvation. of Noah is applied by St. Peter as a figure of that Salvation which we now obtain as the family of Jesus Christ in the Ark of the Church by the waters of Baptism: the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark

was

save us by the Resur

By which it is to be

was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. A like figure whereunto, even Baptism doth now rection of Jesus Christ *. understood, that the salvation of Christians by Jesus Christ, and the salvation of Noah's family, are two events of the like form and figure; the former a sign of the latter. And a wonderful sign it was, if we look into the particu lars. Here was a judgment which extended to a whole world; a condemnation that passed upon all, except those who were of the family of Noah: as the wrath of God and a future judgment upon sin, to be executed by fire, is denounced against all mankind, except those who shall belong to the family of Jesus Christ. As an ark was prepared by Noah, so hath Christ prepared his Church, to conduct us in safety through the waves of trouble and the perils of the world, in which so many are lost. And as the waters of the flood carried Noah and his family into a new world after the old was drowned; so do the waters of baptism carry us into a new state with Jesus Christ, who passed over the waves of death and is risen from the dead. And this practical inference is to be made in favour of the ordinance of the Church;

I Pet. iii. 20, 21.

Church; that as the ark could not be saved but by water, so must all the Church of Christ be baptised. So plainly doth this whole figure. speak the doctrine of the Christian Salvation, that it is applied for instruction in the office of Baptism, where we are taught to pray, that the child may be received into the Ark of Christ's Church, and therein pass through the waves of this troublesome world. Many other particulars belonging to this figure will explain themselves when the general sense of the figure is understood; and therefore I need pursue it no further.

The confusion of tongues, with the dispersion of the nations, is another great event, which comes next in order of time, and ought not to be unnoticed, because it was reversed when all the nations, so divided at Babel, were gathered together in one in Christ Jesus, to be a holy nation, a peculiar people: and the different languages which arose at Babel were all united in the tongues of the first preachers of the Gospel on the day of Pentecost. God being the fountain of truth and author of peace, his religion makes itself intelligible to all; but where there is disobedience of mind and wickedness of principle, there do confusion and division ensue, as in the first religious rebellion at Babel.

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