mansion to dwell in, ye shall worship me, saith he, upon an altar of earth, such as may be easily set up or took down without expence of time and money: This shall be more acceptable to me than altars of hewn or polished stone, with all the ornaments and fineries which you can contrive. It is God's own appointment of the forms and instruments of his own worship, that makes that worship acceptable to him, whether the materials be of earth or gold.

III. When God had briefly mentioned this matter of duty to the people, he adds a rich promise of grace. In all places where I record my name, I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. St. Paul observes; Eph. vi. 2. that honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land, is the first commandment with a promise, and a few hours and minutes after that command was given, this order to worship God according to his own appointment, was sent to them; and it may be properly called the second commandment with promise; and a glorious promise it is indeed, of the presence of God with his people, to encourage to an exact and punctual performance of all his institutions in their worship.

Now let me take a short survey of these words of promise, and explain them briefly in general terms. By God's recording his own name, we are here to understand, his appointing any thing relating to his honour by his own authority, or his giving some notice how or where he would be worshipped by men; what place he has fixed, or what forms of adoration he hath stamped with his own name and authority: And wheresoever these his institutions are celebrated in all their appointed forms, there the name of God is recorded. By his own coming to his people, which he has here promised, we must understand, his favourable discoveries of himself to those who worship him in the place and manner which he ordains: and this he has often done by some signals of his own gracious presence with them. He will let them know that he approves them, favours them and resides amongst them. By his blessing his people, he intends to signify, that he will not only accept the worship which is paid to him according to his own appointment, but he will make their attendances upon him effectual for some blessed ends: He will bestow those blessings of the covenant of grace, which are sought for by his people in their attendance on his worship.

Now that we may raise such meditations from these words as may suit our present purpose of beginning to wait upon God in a new erected place of worship, permit me to lead your thoughts along in order by the following propositions :

I." That God who has ordained his own worship, together with the special modes and forins of it, has often in ancient times appointed the particular place of his worship, on single or

special occasions." It was while Adam tarried in paradise after his fall, and before he was driven out of the garden of Eden, that he was doubtless taught and required to offer sacrifices of beasts; for since flesh was not then appointed to be eaten, what could it be but the skins of beasts which were offered in sacrifice, out of which God made coats or garments for him and his wife? And hereby paradise itself, where the first sin was committed, was the appointed place for that sort of worship by sacrifice, by which the first typical atonement should be made for sin. But it does not appear that there was any continuance of that appointment more than for one season of worship: For our first parents were quickly driven out of that delightful garden. Noah, when he came out from the ark, at the order of God, upon mount Ararat, where the ark rested, there he offered sacrifices, and that doubtless by divine appointment; for the Lord smelled a sweet savour in them, and gave him a promise that he would not again curse the ground; Gen. viii. 20, 21.

It was by the special appointment of God, in a certain spot of the land of Canaan, that Abraham sacrificed to God a heijer, a goat, and a ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon, and divided them asunder; and there God condescended to pass between these pieces, under the emblem of a smoking furnace and a burning lamp, and made a covenant with his servant; Gen. xv. 9—17. It was also upon mount Moriah that Abraham received orders from heaven to offer his own son Isaac as a burnt offering, aud there he received a further blessing from the Lord, and the promise of the great Messiah to be derived from his seed, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed; Gen. xxii. 2, 17, 18. It was at mount Sinai, that God ordered the nation of Israel to worship him, when he had brought them forth from Egyptian bondage; Exod. iii. 12. and again he appointed the "young men of the seed of Israel, to sacrifice oxen unto him under the hill, with an altar and twelve pillars, and made a covenant with the people;" Exod. xxiv. 5-8. So in following times, Gideon, and Samuel, and David, under inspiration, were required sometimes to offer particular sacrifices, and pay solemn worship unto God, in places different from the general orders which were given to all Israel for the public worship of the nation; otherwise, they would not have dared to have done it, nor would their sacrifices have been accepted, by such evident and illustrious testimonies from heaven, as some of them received. These few instances make it evident, that God sometimes appointed a particular place for his own worship.

II. "Though the great God prescribed to several persons the particular spot of ground on which he would be worshipped on single and special occasions; yet when he appointed any special place for his own worship in the solemn returns of it at stated

seasons, it was only to the nation of Israel, who were a peculiar people, chosen to himself from among the rest of the nations." This he did first when there was a tabernacle built for him in the wilderness For though that was a moveable house or building, yet it was always at the door of the tabernacle, that the brazen altar was to stand, where alone sacrifices were to be offered; Lev. xvii. 4, 8, 9. and incense was to be burnt no where at stated seasons but only in the tabernacle on the altar of gold; Exod. xxx. 1-10. When the Israelites were come to Canaan, Shiloh, in the tribe of Ephraim, was the first appointed place for the settlement of the ark of God, and the tabernacle, and there only were sacrifices to be offered. Josh. xviii. 1. "And the whole congregation assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle there." Now, that this was done by divine appointment, see Jer. vii. 12. "Go ye now to my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first." And his practice, of worshipping God in Shiloh, was repeated by the ancient saints at stated seasons. So Elkanah and Hannah worshipped God there yearly; 1 Sam. i. 3.

In some ages after this, the tabernacle, with the brazen altar was set up in a high place in Gibeon, upon what occasion, or at what time, is not known: The ark which had been carried long before into the camp of Israel, and taken captive by the Philistines, was returned and brought to mount Zion at JerusaJem. When David carried the ark to Zion, which was called his city, because he had taken it from the Jebusites and fixed his own palace there, yet he left the tabernacle of Moses with the brazen altar at Gibeon, and priests were appointed to sacrifice there. See 1 Chron. xv. 1-3. and xvi. 1, 37 *, &c. And though sacrifices were offered in Zion, on that occasion, yet, doubtless, David did this by divine appointment; for he was often directed by divine inspiration, and was accepted of God in these services. God himself says, he would dwell in Zion, for he had desired it; Psal. cxxxii. 13, 14. At the ark in Zion was the most sensible and glorious residence of God on the mercy-seat; this was the most illustrious part of all the building of Moses, and conveyed by God's own order to the city of David. Thither all the tribes went up to worship in David's time: Psal. exxii. 4. and cxxxii. 13. And, upon this account, Zion was mentioned, as the sacred and appointed place of worship, so often in the Psalms of David: And these Psalms being used in Jewish worship, the same name and language was

*Though I cannot find any express order for setting up the tabernable in Gibeon, yet possibly there was such an order; because God shewed his acceptance of Solomon when he offered a thousand sacrifices there, by appearing to him, and promising him wisdom for his royal office. Compare 2 Chron. i. 3. with 1 Kings ii. 4, 5. Though other high places were forbidden, that might be appointed.

continued, even after a temple was built, and used by the prophets in following ages, to signify the place of God's residence and of his worship: And Zion was the word they used to represent and typify the church of God in future ages.

When Solomon was ordered to build that glorious temple in Jerusalem, it was upon another mountain, even mount Moriah, not far off from Zion; 2 Chron. iii. 1. and the ark of the covenant was brought up thither out of the city of David which is Zion; 1 Kings viii. 1. And this temple was the constant fixed place of the worship of the Lord for many generations, even till the days of the Messiah, or the end of the levitical dispensation. Thus the appointed place of the Jewish worship in its special forms, and at the stated returning seasons, was the tabernacle or the ark which was formed by Moses, or the temple built by Solomon, from the time of their departure from Egypt to the age of the Messiah. There the daily sacrifices of the two lambs were to be offered, there the burning lamps were to be kindled, there the sweet incense was to smoke towards heaven every morning and every evening; Ex. xxix. 38. and xxx. 7, 8. There God appointed his own worship with a special uniformity in the whole scheme, and a peculiar harmony betwixt the several parts of it, to hold forth by way of type and emblem, the beauty and glory of the church invisible, worshipping the great and invisible God.

III. "While these appointed places of worship continued to be approved of God, they were called holy places; not only because God dwelt there, but because God claimed them as his own, and would have them solemnly separated for his own peculiar service: And he appointed also what special respect or regard the people should pay to them in testimony of their holiness." When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush on the mount, he commanded him to put off his shoes from his feet, for the place, says he, whereon thou standest is holy ground; Ex. iii. 5. that is, because God was there. When God manifested his presence in lightning and thunder, and thick smoke on mount Sinai, to pronounce his law from heaven, the mountain was to have bounds or rails fixed round about it, that neither man nor beast might touch it; Ex. xix. 23. Heb. xii. 20. When he fixed his visible dwelling amongst his people Israel, even before they came to be settled in the land of Canaan, as well as after, there were various degrees of holiness assigned to places according to their nearness of God, or the visible token of his presence. When he appointed the orders of the camp of Israel, this camp though moveable, had some degrees of holiness in it: for God represents himself as dwelling in the midst of them, and walking among them, therefore no unclean thing was to be left public and visible there; Deut. xxiii. 14.

When Moses was instructed and required to erect the tabernacle, it was to stand in the middle of the camp: There was the open court, surrounded with curtains, whither only the priests and the levites might come to perform the services of the sanctu ary, and the daily sacrifices which God appointed. In this court stood the laver and altar of burnt-offerings: In this court stood the tabernacle itself, a covered building; the first part whereof was called the holy place, where only the priests came who performed daily services: There stood the golden candlestick, the alter of incense, aud the table of shew-bread; the inner part of it was called the holy of holies, where God dwelt in a bright cloud; there none but the high priest might enter, and that once a year on the great day of atonement; Ex. xxvi. 33. When they were settled in the promised land, the land itself was called holy, for it was the Lord's; Lev. xxv. 27. Zech. vii. 12. He claimed it for his own; Jer. ii. 7. The towns and cities of it were called holy cities; Isa. Ixiv. 10. No man was suffered to inhabit within the gates of them, but who became a proselyte of the true religion, so far as to renounce all idols, and to worship the God of Israel only, and who took upon him, as is generally said, the observation of the seven precepts of Noah, about murder and eating blood, &c.

Jerusalem was peculiarly the holy city, or the holy mountain; for in David or Solomon's time, and afterwards, the mountains of Zion and Moriah were included in it. David brought the ark of God into Zion, and Solomon built the temple on mount Moriah, which by that means were made holy ground. The temple in general contained in it many courts and buildings, whose holiness had very different degrees, as learned men have observed; and the chief of them were formed according to the tabernacle of Moses, but others were not so.

1. There was the court of the gentiles, where the heathens and the proselytes of the gate were permitted to walk: Whether this was distinguished in Solomon's time is a doubtful enquiry; it is most probable, it was not.

2. The court of the people, or the court of Israel, into which no uncircumcised person was suffered to enter: It was only for those who were originally of the seed of Israel, or were circumcised and entered into complete Judaism, and became the proselytes of righteousness, or the proselytes of the temple. The tabernacle of Moses had not these two courts: The camp of Israel, and the country round about served instead of them.

3. There was the court of the priests and levites, who performed the worship of sacrifices: this was according to the forms and orders of the tabernacle of Moses: And therefore in this court stood the brazen altar and the laver; the one to signify