PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

The restoration of God’s chosen people at the close of this age was a truth obscured by a Church that had appropriated those promises for its own purposes. Around the start of the nineteenth century the Lord was gracious enough to begin to open the eyes of a few to the literal significance of the prophecies set forth in His Word. The Church was perhaps entering the Laodician age and needed to prepare for the things to come. The Roman church had, certainly since the fifth century A.D. preached a gospel of replacement; that is the Church taking on the mantle of Israel and inheiriting the promises once given to that bride.

In 1812, under the very noses of some who would stifle the blessed hope of the Jews, ‘Ben Ezra’ published ‘The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty’ during a brief period of respite from the Roman Catholic Inquisition. By some miracle the work reached Britain, and was taken up and translated by Edward Irving, a minister of the Church of Scotland. Published in England in 1827 the work has been oft quoted and represented (though not always accurately). It has proven difficult to place the original in the hands of modern readers due to the lack of printed copies.

‘Ben Ezra’ is the psydonim for a Roman Jesuit priest named Manuel de Lacunza. This information will occasion many Protestants to read no further, but bear with us a while before shutting the book. I would avow this before you the reader: if Luther was correct in demanding ‘Sola Scriptorum’ (and would we dare to deny that) then Lacunza may be taken as a model of those that would follow Luther’s clarion call. If ever a Christian author was to insist absolutely on the veracity and primacy of the Word of God these pages show such a one. Indeed, one of the prime reasons for his work was to rebutt the centuries old claims of the ‘doctors of the Church’ who sought to put the Church in the position of the Jews both now and during the end times. Lacunza takes us back again and again to the inerrant word of God and sweeps away 12 centuries of replacement theology to show again the teaching of the early church and the scriptures. For these reasons, and despite the support of his peers who read the work, the Catholic Church banned the book.

None-the-less, we have to recognise the Lacunza was a Roman Catholic; there are a few doctrinal views in the work that will cause concern. But, as Irving says, the few Roman doctrines that do appear are far outweighed by the light of the gospel. And who are we to strain at those few gnats when the Protestant Church has swallowed so many camels! In any case, did the reformers themselves all fully come out from some of those pervasive doctrines of the Roman Church? So, no more on this topic; the volumes herein contain so much sweetness and truth that we say let the intelligent readers of any denomination decide for themselves after studyng this work.

Why produce this version? Lacunza’s contribution to present day evangelicalism was to reassert the restoration of the Jews in the end-times, the two-fold coming of the Lord; the millenial reign; the setting up of the temple sacrifice once again; and the restoration of the earth following the yet future and final defeat of Satan. His position has been described technically as ‘futurist posttribulational’, he offers some explanations of scripture that seem unacceptable to us today (for example the concept of Antichrist as a moral body rather than a person), but always he relies on the Word as his authority. Actually he has more to say on the end-times than those few points but why repeat here what he himself so eloquently discusses.

There is a second reason for republishing the work and that is to make available to serious students of church history a work published at a time when our understanding of ‘the Church’ and the rapture of the saints was beginning to be discussed with renewed fervor amongst Christians. It is not the purpose of this preface to dicuss the relative significance of J. N. Darby, Edward Irving or Emmanuel Lacunza: others have given that fuller attention that I might ever hope to do. I simply offer this to the present Church as a servant of the Most High, giving my bretheren the opportunity to read this work at their leisure; to see what Lacunza does, and does not say. We will not agree with everything he says, indeed we may agree with nothing; but then all Lacunza ever asks of us is that we read and consider.

The copying and transcribing work that this version represents would not have been possible to me without the aid of modern electronic techniques and the peace of God during its long gestation. I have undertaken the work with the diligence due to the product of a brother in Christ: this edition is intended to be a facsimile of the original and therefore no editing has taken place. Any inconsistencies with the original publication are the unwitting fault of the present ‘scribe’; none have been intended. However, to make the flow of the work a little more restful to the modern eye a few technical amendments have been made. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected (though I may have inadvertently created some of my own in such a large undertaking).

Should you desire a taste of Lacunza’s writing then read this snippet below, and then perhaps you will see the worth of his labour:

These things which I have pointed out, and others of the same kind, are doubtless the things upon which they (the doctors) have their eye, when they set forth and exaggerate the great danger we are in from reading the scriptures without the light and help of their commentaries. It may not be, that as we believe without difficulty everything we read in the scriptures against the Jews and in favour of the Christianized Gentiles, we should likewise believe with simplicity what we find in the same scriptures to be written against, and in disparagement of the Christian nations, and in favour of the Jews. It may not be, that we should fall into the error of thinking, or suspecting, that the great affliction which befell the people of God, and his first spouse, may likewise befall the new people and the second spouse, likewise so much beloved by God. It may not be, finally, That we should open our eyes and regard even as possible, that the first spouse of God, or the house of Jacob, may one day return to the favour of her husband; may one day with great honours be recalled to her antient dignity; may one day occupy the place now filled by her who succeeded; —when she also shall have become faithless and ungrateful as the former, and when she shall have surpassed her in malice, and make her appear just, by the abundance of her own iniquity. All these things which I have pointed out as it were merely in the sketch, will, as we proceed, open out by little and little; for it is not possible to explain in a few words such great, and at the same time such delicate mysteries.

Part II PH V.

The reader may note that text unique to this edition has been presented in a sans-serif font to distinguish it from the original.

Even so, Come Lord Jesus…

Jonathan Tillin Belper December 2000

DEDICATION.

To the CHURCH OF CHRIST of all denominations who Worship God in the English tongue, and believe that Jesus Christ, who came heretofore in suffering flesh, shall come hereafter in glory.

DEARLY BELOVED IN THE LORD.

My soul is greatly afflicted because of the present unawakened and even dead condition of all the churches, with respect to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, which draweth nigh, and which, as I believe, is, close at hand: and having, by God’s especial providence, been brought to the knowledge of a book, written in the Spanish tongue, which clearly sets forth, and demonstrates from Holy Scripture, the erroneous-ness of the opinion, almost universally entertained amongst us, that He is not to come till the end of the millennium, and what you call the last day, meaning thereby the instant or very small period preceding the conflagration and annihilation of this earth; I have thought it my duty to translate the same into the English tongue for your sake, that you may be able to disabuse yourselves of that great error, which hath become the inlet to many false hopes, and will, I fear, if not speedily corrected, prove the inlet to many worldly principles and confederacies, and hasten the ruin and downfall of the present churches. And now, forasmuch as it is to those who look for him that he is to appear without sin unto salvation, and to those who love his appearing that the crown of glory remaineth, I do exhort you, dearly beloved in the Lord, and as a friend and brother I do entreat you, yea, as a ambassador of the great God our Saviour, whose servants you are, I do command you, in that High and Holy name at which every knee shall bow, that you take leisure from your several avocations, lay aside your several speculations, and diligently apply yourselves to the Holy Scriptures and to the throne of the Heavenly Majesty, that by the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to show you things to come, you may come to some light of divine knowledge, and determination of holy purpose, upon this subject of Messiah’s advent, which until now hath ever been wont to be cherished as the great and darling hope of the believer’s soul. Whereby we know that it is the last time, because it is written (2 Pet. i.3.), there shall come in the last days scoffers, saying, Where is the hope of his coming.

From your brother in the common faith, and servant in the Ministry of the Gospel, a Presbyter of the Church of Scotland.

EDWARD IRVING.

PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE.

On the Intellect

But that the infinite importance of this may be rendered still more distinct, let me further observe, that the three great offices under which the glorious person of Christ is set forth in Holy Scripture as our prophet, our priest, and our king, are made use of by the Holy Spirit for working out three very distinct parts in the redemption of the believer; the first being used to redeem his intellect, the second to redeem his conscience, and the third to redeem the active power or dominion of both body and mind over the creatures: and these effects in the subject are so necessarily dependant upon those several causes in the object, that it is vain to think they can be interchanged with one another, or that any one can be spared, as if the faith of his prophetic office would also redeem the conscience, or the faith of his priestly office do more than purify the conscience from dead works, and likewise redeem the body from the power of the creatures, which is the fruit of the kingly office: yet though none of the offices of Christ can be separated from its proper fruit and effect, I am very far from saying that there is not a natural tendency in the one to lead on to and prepare the way for the other, seeing the offices belong to the same person, and the operations are wrought upon the same person: but I assert that no more than the promise or buddings of the fruit will be put forth, unless there be applied to the soul that particular nourishment from the knowledge of Christ which is proper to the cultivation and maturity of each several kind.

Now, of these three, the office of Christ as our prophet is the means used by the Holy Spirit for working the redemption of the understanding of man; that faculty by which we acquire the knowledge on which proceed both our inward principles of conduct and our outward acts of power. Knowledge or reasonings upon knowledge are not the cause of natural conscience nor of outward power; these are as essential parts of a man as the intellect itself; which apprehendeth knowledge; but forasmuch as they do not act with any range or certainty but in the light of knowledge, and indeed do not act at all without a measure of knowledge, place the understanding first, as it cometh first into action, and assert that it is not to be reclaimed from its ignorance and errors otherwise than by receiving Christ as the prophet to instruct us, as the truth in which he instructeth us, the object seen, the light by which we see it, and the wisdom which is gotten by looking into his glorious face. This revelation of Christ, as the prophet includeth the whole word of God, which the Holy Spirit maketh to become unto us knowledge and wisdom, to which holy word the intellect of man is naturally averse, albeit if he displayed with all cunning adaptation to its highest taste, and set forth in the sublimest and most pathetic forms, with a constant respect to its natural desires and appetites. But by the very reason that man is so proud and selfish, and bent on calling that most excellent in which he findeth himself have made any progress, it cometh to pass that instead of relishing these the perfect forms which the universal reason and the eternal word hath put on, he turneth aside to feed on the garbage which he hath gathered from some corner of fallen nature; haply from his own reflections upon himself, haply from the imitation of another like himself, haply from the common sense of the multitude, haply from some barren field of inanimate nature.

And so it tareth to the intellect from its very degradation, and contentedness therewith, to be naturally averse from the sublime and perfect truth which is written in the word of God, that is, from the revelation of Christ as a prophet. Whence the fallen intellect becometh the most fertile parent of infidelity, setting itself up as a sufficient light, as a sufficient prophet to the whole man. What with its proverbs, and its expedients, and its mechanical resources, it deemeth itself to be the Lord of this visible creation; in which it frets itself in the despite of God, to the great satisfaction of Lucifer, the Son of the morning, who is the prototype and pattern of all these bastard and fruitless intellects: and it lays the foundation of the doctrine, that man is the prophet, the priest, and the king to himself, withstandeth Christ’s eternal Lordship, and requiteth as deceivers and blind leaders of the blind all those who would yield him reverence in his High and Holy Place. And the result is to destroy all bonds and obligations, to subvert all government: to obliterate the sweet traces of all relationship, and make each man an isolated tyrant to the extent of his power, breaking up all society, and treading under foot all things sacred and divine. Whereby it cometh to pass in the end, that the strongest intellect becomes the master tyrant, of discontented and dissatisfied tyrants, whom he is fain to keep in check by military government; of all which we have had a notable instance in the French revolution, that first great work of the spirit of the human intellect, which will soon be cast into the shade by other works still greater and more terrible. Now this is exactly the spirit that ruleth in all countries of Europe, that rageth most of all in Britain, because it hath here most to contend against, and especially in Scotland, whose ecclesiastical institutions are eminently fitted to cultivate intellect, and are at present wholly inefficient to overawe their own child, but do rather cajole it, and keep it quiet by presenting every divine doctrine at its bar, instead of submitting it steadfastly to the supreme and indefeasible jurisdiction of faith. Of which faith indeed my countrymen and churchmen have matured an intellectual theory, (that it is no more than the bare receiving of the written word or testimony,) a fictitious counterfeit, for the use of our intellectual land, and in homage to the intellect who ruleth the ascendant of this age. Oh how Satan hath enthralled us, and how resolved he is to hold us in his thraldom! for while he hath been pushing forward this empire of the human intellect upon all sides against the church; he hath at the same the begun destroying in the church the reverence of Christ as the prophet, which alone can withstand him.

What do you mean? I hear them say aloud around me. I mean that Christ is not received any more by the church as her prophet. I hear them answer, Is not his word honoured above all former time, circulated beyond all former example? still I answer, you contemn Christ as a prophet: you despise the prophetic character of his word ; you make light of those who esteem it, our take any account of it; and I say unto thee, thou backsliding intellectual demi-infidel church, thou knowest nothing of the prophetic office of Christ, or the prophetic character of his word. It is not against Christ the teacher, but Christ the prophet, that I arrest thee of high treason. This quality of every word of God to be prophetic as well as commemorative and instructive, hath been quite forgotten, and is utterly despised of thee. And, as I said, it is by this peculiar part or property alone that his word holdeth mastery over the intellect of man; the mind of God in this differing from the mind of man, and by this having authority over it; in that it is prophetic, and doth take instruments upon the dark future, as well as upon the past and the present. The human mind is historical, and it is observant of the present, and it is metaphysical, that is, independent of place and time, but it is not prophetical. I say not that in any kind It doth at all approach to the mind of God, but that in all other kinds it can ape it, and steal from it, and make a fashion of withstanding it, and doth withstand it, and suppose that it has triumphed over it; but in the dark arcana and mysteries of the future it can make neither pretence nor debate against the holy word. Now (observe the subtlety of Satan, and the deceivableness of man) this is the very attribute and characteristic of’ God’s word, which the visible church dcspiseth, holding it no unequivocal sign of folly or madness to give any heed to it, But they are the fools, they are the madmen, they are the traitors to the cause of God, who venture into the field of battle withouut a weapon, or think to cast out Beelzebub by Beelzebub. I do not mean to assert that the word of God hath not a sweet accommodation and a strong arguement to the intellect, which none in this age better understandeth or more ably wieldeth, than the ministers of my own church; but I say it hath no power nor mastery over it, no lordship nor sovereignty such as my Lord expecteth from his word, so long as it is submitted to the judgment of the intellect, and not presented in those overmastering forms which lay the intellect prostrate at its feet.

From the first promise made in Paradise, to the last scene in the Apocalypse with which this warfare will be accomplished, every thing that is said, and every thing that is done, and every thing that is instituted by God is a regular succession of prophetic history and developement, every part fulfilling something foregoing, and holding out something which remaineth to be fulfilled. Yea, and the providence of God to his church is also prophetic, containing more than met the observation or occupied the understanding of his servants then present and acting. It is truth continuous and in a state of growth; of which the world is as it were the soil, and the the clear heavens into which brancheth forth like the great mustard tree, and the who1e church is the changing forms of the fruit as it ripens to the maturity of a redeemed world, every individual member a sort of first fruits of the harvest which is to be reaped. And it is the demonstration of this truth in all its variety which constitutes preaching or prophesying, the showing of Christ in every type, person, and ordinance of God’s election, the showing the testimony of Jesus to be the Spirit of prophecy, the showing that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, but hath respect to Him, being spoken by the Holy Ghost whose office it is to take of the things of Christ; not of his own, but of Christ’s, and show them unto our souls, and to show us also things to come.

It is Christ the prophet, it is not Christ the metaphysician, nor Christ the scholar, nor Christ the doer of miracles, but Christ the prophet, by which the Holy Spirit takes hold of the human intellect, to shake it out of its own vain self-sufficiency, and bring down its proud imaginations, and find admission for those infinite holy truths which are revealed in the word. Then when you have humbled the rebel intellect by mightier power, and tamed the cruel savage by greater wisdom, the Holy Spirit doth deal with him, and bring him into the subjection of faith, and so work upon him the image of Christ. But while the inferior reason yieldeth no awe of the superior, or pretendeth to try conclusions with it, while the rebel child holdeth his head proudly erect, in presence of his ill-used and much offended Father, it is vain to expect any dutifulness. There must be reverence first, and reverence cometh of superiority. And this is the great point of the superiority of the divine mind over the human mind, of the universal reason over the individual fallen reason, that it knoweth no bounds, dimensions, nor limitations, but dealeth with the past as with the present, and with the future as with both. Of which things being well convinced, whether thou, backsliding church, wilt hear or not, I will lift up my voice while I have a being, and declare that thou shalt never meet the sceptical, intellectual, and infidel character of those times, but by occupying the ground of prophecy; whereof, let me tell thy present ignorance, there is as much in the gospels as in the prophets, as much in the epistles as in the psalms, and abundance every where: as the perusal of this book which I have translated with show thee, and as the teaching of the Spirit who teacheth things to come will teach thee, when thou wilt acknowledge this his office, and give heed unto that by which he executeth it, viz. the prophetic character of God’s word. Which spoliation of the prophetic office of my Lord and Saviour, and neglect of the prophetic character of his word, hath arisen from losing sight of, or explaining away in the manner set forth above, the great future event of his coming, of the resurrection of the saints, of their reign upon the earth, and the earth’s complete and everlasting redemption. This consummation for which every thing that hath been done, and is now doing by God, is but the preparation, having fallen out of the expectation of the church, or been supplanted by an aerial etherial state of indefinite and undefinable blessedness, the church hath cast her eye from the future upon this earth, to a future away from this earth, and so ceased wholly from regarding the prophetic bearing of Scripture, as concerning matters of fact, and come to regard the prophecies as spiritual similitudes and emblems. Which she was in a manner forced to do by that system of future shadows she hath embraced for future facts, and she must continue to do so while she holdeth the system fast. For it is most manifest that if sayings such as these, “we shall reign upon the earth,” “I will give them power over the nations,” “I will make thee a pillar in the New Jerusalem which cometh down from my God out of heaven,” “thou shalt stand in thy lot in the end of the days,” “his feet shall stand upon mount Olivet,” &c. &c. with all the events therewith connected, are not to be fulfilled on the earth, what can one who receives the Scriptures do, but forget their prophetic character altogether, and spiritualize them as darkly and dimly shadowing forth something which is to be eleswhere?

How much better did the Jews occupy this part of their commission, than we Gentiles have done. They never doubted that the fact would be as it was written, and there where it was written, to take place. But we not only doubt, but disbelieve both. By which very disbelief, all the prophetic virtue of Scripture is lost to us, and we are open to every assault of the enemy. The Jews can throw stones at us, the infidel can deride us for want of evidence, the antiquarian can cast obscurity over our records, the metaphysician can reason us out of all the essential points of our faith; and the intellectual believer substitute his own demonstrations for the submission of faith. Whereas, if the expectations with which Christ for ever endowed his Church were again to become her belief; she would look forward to his second coming, and diligently inquire into and carefully guard every part of Scripture which beareth thereon: whence it would come to pass that the prophetic character of all Scripture would come to be recognized, for it all pointeth to that glorious event; and the prophetic office of Christ restored, and a barrier, the only effectual barrier, placed against the deluge of infidelity which hath swept over the church under the disguise of intellectual illumination and expedient usefulness. It was the expectation of Messiah which made the Jews to set such a value upon their prophecies; it is the absence of such an expectation or indifference to it, which hath made us to set so little value upon them. And this overawing restraint being removed, the intellect hath run riot in its own follies. Oh when will the foolishness of preaching reduce the rebel to subjection again; when again shall we have those Spirit-taught preachers, who did draw the substance of their discourses from the whole providence and word of God, presenting Christ every where, and labouring to show the glory of his person every where! I would not despair of the times, if I saw preaching beginning to resume the character which it had at the reformation, and adding whatever other weapons out of the armoury the Lord may give us for the fearful odds that are now against us. But I do despair when I behold ingenious reasonings, loose declamations, subtle school exercises, and other forms of man’s wayward mind, substituted in place of the royal ordinance of preaching, and the plentiful demonstration of Christ’s glorious person, and the discovery of his all-comprehending wisdom, and the fine relish and high delight of truth which is in all his words, and the masterly dignity which is in all his discourses.

On the Use of Emblems

Not only, however, is the right apprehension of the prophetical office of Christ, and the prophetical character of his word most necessary for enforcing the divine authority of it over the mind, and constituting for it a body of evidence wide and large and lasting as the events of the church and of the world thus foreshown; but also for obtaining an outward visible history, and emblematic imagery, a sacred language to express spiritual things withal, and in which the true spiritual church might read and know her own condition. Our great Prophet, foreseeing that the fulfilment of the priestly office which he properly took upon him at his death, and hath since exercised by the Holy Ghost in the souls of believers, would, during the ages which had to intervene between his two advents, be an administration purely spiritual and essentially invisible; and kindly considering that what cannot be seen cannot be described so as that a man may know whether he possesseth it or not, and those who possess it may communicate with one another, and preach it to the understanding of others, to the end they may take means to obtain it, did by the history and institutions of the earlier church, constitute a set of emblems, and make a language, which should be appropriate for setting forth the great spiritual acts of the Trinity in the salvation of a sinner, the progress of spiritual perfection in the souls of believers, and the conditions of spiritual life in the midst of a world lying in wickedness. This I take to be one of the great works of Christ our Prophet, preparing for the coming of Christ our Priest. To open this idea fully and completely will require a little patience, but it is most worthy of all which we can bestow upon it.

There are only three sets of terms which can be employed to communicate the work of our Great High Priest, in sanctifying the soul of a believer by the Holy Ghost. The first is by using the common and current language of life, in which men are wont to express the more ordinary appearances of the outward world, and of their own personal experience. The second is by using the more refined language of the polite and learned, of the philosopher, and the poet, and the moralist, which I call the language of the schools. The third is by using the language of the sanctuary, that is, the emblematical language furnished by the events and ordinances of God’s church, which are recorded in the Holy Scriptures. Let me open a little the peculiar character and effects of these three which may be called the popular, the philosophical, and the prophetical methods of setting forth Christ the Prophet, Priest, and King of his church.

The first deriveth its illustrations, and figures, and other forms of expression, from the objects of daily observation with which the people are familiar; and is almost the only popular preaching of this day. You have it in its most distinct form amongst the methodists; but it prevails less or more among that great body of ministers who are not prepared for the holy office of preaching, and take it upon them from a conceit of their faculty of speech, and their strong impressions of religion. Yet far am I from saying that the unlearned minister must necessarily adopt this method, to which we have a notable exception in John Bunyan, and William Huntingdon, two most able preachers, and, as it seems to me, two of the purest writers after the scriptural type; nor do I mean to say that the learning of the schools will protect from this vicious style of proclaiming the work of Christ in our salvation; for the schools can only perfect the second method, which hath perhaps as great though not such obvious faults as this popular method whereof I now treat, The evil of which consisteth, first, in connecting spiritual things too much with sensible images, whereby they are degraded and misunderstood, and the visible world too much honoured.

The topics of a discourse whose object is to exalt the life of faith over and above the life of sight, ought to he taken from the things of faith, from the revealed acts of God’s invisible power and glory, the manifestations of his favour and displeasure, of his salvation and his judgment: not from instances contained in this or that magazine, or remarkable events recorded in this or that newspaper, nor from the sermon of this or that man, nor from the storehouse of the preacher’s rough and ready rememberances. This is to look at things seen and temporal, not at things unseen and eternal. I say not but that there ought to be a happy intermixture of this kind, in order that the familiar scenes and current events of life may be sanctified by comparison with the holy scenes and recorded events of God’s revealed acts; but I do say that when those form the great fund for the language, reference and illustration of a discourse, the effect is to vulgarize, vilify, and degrade, to the level of the basest forms of human thought and discourse, those spiritual themes, which being aptly expressed and illustrated by the great prophetical emblems of the scriptures, would purify the heart, enlarge the soul, and exalt the discourse of the common people in a most wonderful degree: whereof we have such a striking proof and illustration in the Scottish peasantry, whose prayers are beyond comparison the most copious and worthy of the divine ear, that I have ever heard pronounced extempore.

The second evil of the popular method of discoursing is, to leave the people totally ignorant of the Scriptures, which they no longer realize as writings of no private interpretation, dictated by the Holy Ghost for the food of that spiritual life which is common and not peculiar, nor as the record of God’s great and wondrous acts, for setting forth to us his incommunicable and invisible being and attributes; while they hear them skimmed superficially, tortured violently, accommodated ingeniously, spiritualized wildly and left mainly unknown, hidden in the obscurity of profound disregard; one text in a chapter haply comprehended, and the rest not thought of; the scope, the facts, the allusions, the predictions, and all the other most essential ingredients of the divine record wholly unnoticed and disregarded. And this they call preaching simply, preaching to the heart, setting forth plain truths to simple people; as if the Lord had not given the people a mind, or would not be loved and served with all the mind; or had not revealed light for the understanding; or as if the mind could be rank and unweeded, and the heart be pure; the head unfurnished with the knowledge of truth, yet the heart filled with the love of it. Oh, such folly, oh, such wickedness, oh, such villany, oh, such treacherous dealing by thy Holy word! such poisoning and destruction of thy holy people! For this popular method of expressing spiritual things by visible and common imagery, instead of drawing the fact, and illustration, and doctrine and all from God’s word, is the very bane of the people; and is preparing them for superstition of some form or other, if it hath not already plunged them into it in many quarters.

The second method of discovering to others the mysteries of the divine being and his offices in the salvation of a sinner, of continuing the prophetic office of Christ and ministering to the sanctification of the church, is by using the more refined language of the learned classes, and drawing the subject matter of the discourse into the form of a disquisition, of an argument, of an embellished oration, of an essay of morals, of a pathetic piece of sentiment, or a poetical invention, or some other philosophical exercise proper to the closet, or some rhetorical performance proper to the platform or the stage, or some dry logical question proper to the schools. The effect of which method is to overlook the great body of the congregation, to entertain or astonish the rest; and to discharge the proper office of the ministry to none. It may serve the end of maintaining the reputation of a clergy for learned accomplishments, and of a church for orthodoxy; to propagate amongst a people the spirit of speculation, and build them up in the sufficiency of their intellect; to play a tune upon the feelings and dally with the fancy, and somewhat stir the surface-waters of the heart; but to convince of sin, and convey adequate apprehensions of its hatefulness, to teach the knowledge of God, and to convey a worthy idea of his holiness, to reveal the glorious person of Christ, and of the mystery of godliness contained in his threefold office, or to communicate the evidences of a work of grace, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit; it is as inadequate, it is as vile and worthless, as to expound the system of the heavens in the language of a magazine, or to describe the heaven of heavens with the vocabulary of a newspaper. This kind of discoursing in Tillotson and his school, brought forth the religious formality and ignorance of the last century in the Church of England in the writings of Blair and his school, (dilettante preachers and amateur divines, fair sportive creatures of the sunbeam, the genus of being farthest removed from that whereof preachers ought to hold who are the children of the quickening Spirit) it begat moderation in the church of Scotland, which style of it, being likened to things on earth, is the nova-Zemblia of preaching, in the air the limbo of vanity, and in the depth below a still lower deep than the lowest. Oh, but I perceive in my dearly-beloved land and mother church, a more subtle form of this insufficient preaching to have won its way among the orthodox and spiritual, (if I may dare to use that word in its popular use to signify the negation of down-right formality, not formal,) which is to reduce every point of doctrine to an argument or expostulation, and engage with it, as if it were an intellectual question to be demonstrated before the intellect of the people; or a question of natural feeling to be appealed to their natural sense of well being; or a question of advantage to be rendered to the common interest of men. Whereby they erect a judgment seat, and constitute a court within the person of the fallen sinner, and they do constitute into a judge the guilty arraigned criminal, whom God doth not plead before, but presenteth to him an accusation proved, a reprieve purchased, and if not accepted, a judgement and second death sure and everlasting as the word of him who spake it. Whereby they mangle the productive unity of divine truth, and present it in a dead state, cut into small pieces, to be served up to the taste of men. Whereby they propagate that idolatry of the human understanding which they aim to contend against; taking Satan’s damned weapons to fight against Satan, and contesting the battle with his gyves upon their feet, his shackles upon their hands, and his speech that needeth to be ashamed in their mouth. Oh my country! Oh my mother church! I am pained for thee. How surely thou art steering to the gulf of infidelity, unless the Lord send a strong one to turn thy head against the stream!

From which two evils of prophesying to the sense or to the understanding it seemeth to me there is no deliverance now, nor defence at an time, but by betaking ourselves to that prophetic character of the word of God, to which we have made so much reference. Christ’s priestly Office cannot now be preached by us but through the knowledge of his prophetical office. The things written aforetime for our learning must he known; the things written for types must be used as types of spiritual things; the foreshowing providence of God to his servants and to his church must be opened; the shadows of the priestly office of Christ contained in the Levitical institution, which Paul calleth the perfection of Christian doctrine, must be known and interpreted; the experience of the national church of Israel must be brought forward for the instruction of the holy nation, which is the spiritual church; the fasts and solemn feasts, the offices of the temple, the temple itself, and all its service which was only the mystery of Christ’s holy humanity; the sacrifices daily and annual, the offerings voluntary and required, the ablutions, and every other appointed method of remission, which is only the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice for our sins; the announcements of the prophets, who were but his embassadors and forerunners, to warn the world of his coming; all the various furniture of the church of God; all the emblematical imagery and language of the sanctuary ought to be the materials with which the preacher declareth the mystery of the work of redemption, and the mystery of its application to the souls of believers. This is the preaching of faith, this is simple preaching, and preaching to the simple, this is enlightened preaching, this is practical preaching, this is the prophesying which the Holy Ghost will bless. Take up any writer of the age of the reformation, take up any writer of the puritan age, take up any writer of the non-conformist age, take up our properest models, the discourses of our Lord and his apostles, the epistles to particular churches, the seven epistles to the angels of the churches, the Apocalyptic prophecy, that epistle general to the Gentile church, and see whether they are not all redolent with the incense of the former covenant; whether they are not all living with the imagery of the former dispensation; whether their language is not thence derived, their illustrations, their instances, in short the whole body of their discourse, be it argumentative, doctrinal or practical. Can any Christian who is unskilled in these things sing the Psalms of David which are all expressed in this holy and emblematical language? those Psalms heretofore the treasury of the church, now set aside by compositions of men, or accommodated to the language of the country and times in which we live.

I cannot go into this subject at that length which my convictions of its importance to this present time requireth; and therefore to illustrate and convey the force of what I mean, I shall take one or two examples. And I begin with the history of the Jewish nation, which, past, present and to come, I believe to be a great type and emblem of the history of the spiritual and elect church which hath been from the beginning of the world; the manifestation of a spiritual object by means of a visible and conspicuous object emblematical thereof; the invisible object being the holy generation of the sons of God, the nation of true kings and priests; the emblematical object being the children and nation of Israel. Seeing that the spiritual church was to continue invisible until the second advent of the Lord yet future, and could not therefore become the object of history, observation, or experience, it was necessary in order to preserve its unity, and enable it to know its own spiritual conditions which are also invisible, to choose out a people, to distinguish them and preserve them distinct from all peoples, to give them a history and character of their own, outward, visible, remarkable, and faithfully recorded, which might abide for an emblem of the history and conditions of that true church over whose preservation the Lord watcheth night and day, and whose preservation till he come again is no less a constituent part of the redemption than his incarnation; and for whose sakes, even for the sake of the elect, all the revelations and acts of God to the earth have hitherto been confined; hereafter, no doubt, to be manifested to the whole world of mankind, and for the profit also of the animal and elemental creatures. That which could not be written in the reality, the Lord hath thus written in the emblem, which great emblem and prophecy it is the office of the Spirit, and under Him of the Christian ministry to explain unto the church; not confounding the emblem with the reality, but carefully preserving both. For to obscure, to curtail, or to explain away the emblem, is to do the same evil offices by the spiritual thing signified therein.

In illustration of this I go not into Abraham’s life, which is wholly emblematical, nor into Joseph’s preservation of the chosen family, emblematical of the elect church saved by their outcast prophet; nor do I speak of Egypt preserved by him, which is the world preserved of God out of respect unto Christ’s eternal offering of himself; but, I begin from the Egyptian captivity, which denotes the bondage of the sense and of the powerful Prince of darkness, out of which the spiritual church is delivered by Christ our Passover sacrificed for us. Pharaoh is oft in scripture denominated the dragon and the leviathan, which are proper in their true sense to Satan the piercing serpent. The passing through the Red Sea has been by the apostles declared to be the emblem of baptism, which puts a division between us and the house of our former bondage. From the time that the true spiritual church of Christ hath received that seal of their redemption, they are in the wilderness of this world, and are nourished with the manna of the body of Christ, which is the sacrament of the supper of the Lord, and with the water which follows their footsteps, which is the Holy Spirit following us from our baptism, until we come to the border of the land of promise. So much of our spiritual history is explained by this emblem. I pass the intervening events until the kingly office was constituted in Saul, and afterwards reft from him to be given unto David and Solomon: which I shall hereafter interpret as the great type of the future regal office of Christ and his spiritual church. Then comes the captivity of the Jewish people, which abideth till now, and of which Babylon was but as it were the first month. This, as an emblem, the Spirit of God in the Apocalypse hath applied to the city of Rome, and the kings of the earth confederate with her, who brought the spiritual church into a bondage which she endureth in some degree until this day. The city of Babylon, which was the centre of the captivity, becomes, in its downfall and perpetual destruction, the emblem of that papal city (not Rome, as I judge, but the ten kingdoms with Rome as their centre of unity) which will be destroyed in like manner, immediately before the liberation of the captives by the coming of our Cyrus (Κυρος) with his sanctified ones.

But this long enduring captivity of the Jews, and their scattered and peeled condition, like dried and bleached bones, doth most commonly stand for the emblem of that long captivity of death which the spiritual church is enduring, their bones being scattered about the grave’s mouth. And hence it is that the prophets, foreshowing the restoration of the Jewish nation, do always mix it up with the resurrection of the dead. (Isa. xxv. Hos. xiii.) The scattering of the Jews among all people, without home or property, denoteth the pilgrim state in which the spiritual are waiting for the inheiritance to be revealed in the last times. The gathering of the Jews into their Jerusalem upon the earth denoteth the gathering of the spiritual church out of the captivity of the grave and of αδης, or the separate state (if I might dare to call that a captivity, which certainly is a forcible divorce or separation into the new Jerusalem which cometh down from heaven. And the metropolitan character of the Jewish people among the nations of the earth, is the emblem of the government of the saints under their King. All which I might show with a greater degree of minuteness.

Now so far is this from being fancy, that I am bold to assert it is the pillar and ground of the truth of Holy Scripture. The prophets were taught the future by means of these emblems, as a blind man is taught arithmetic by means of counters. They never speak in the spiritual mood, because they never saw in that mood. Everything which the Spirit manifested to them was by these emblems: and is expressed in these the great historical events and epochs of their nation. True, the matter is too much for the vessel into which it is pressed, and is continually pressing it out of dimension, but still it is the vessel which appeareth. Or, to use the figure of scripture, the womb is big and heaving; but the child was not born to them. And whosoever will not attend to this the language of the prophets in respect to the future, must fall into one or other of these great errors; either despise them wholly as of no profit to truth spiritual, which is to sail in the teeth of the testimony of Jesus and his apostles; or to spiritualize them altogether, which is to be lost; in a shoreless sea of conjecture, speculation, and outrageous extravagance. But understand the character, (and it is very simple to one who is not preoccupied and prejudiced,) and you shall understand the thing which is written therein, and find it like all scripture to be profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.

All that I can say is, that by attending to these simple elements which I learned from St. Paul, the whole of the Old Testament hath become to me like a globe of light, instead of being darkness that might be felt. Keep the pitcher whole, and the waters arc safe; break the pitcher, and the waters are spilt upon the ground, and cannot be gathered up again, and your pitcher also is become a broken vessel, the most useless of all things. At the same time, while I thus give forth these the providences of the Jewish nation as the shafted window and coloured glass, which cast the Mosaic church into a twilight gloom, I know that the light is still the same light of life which is in Christ Jesus; and that it served the ends of the ministry of that house given to the keeping of Moses and his successors. Likewise I believe that their own history is to the Jewish people typical of that which is to come to them, when they shall become a Christian and spiritual people; may I believe that after it hath served all the purposes of the present Gentile church for spiritual guidance, it will begin to serve anew all the purposes of the Jewish nation, in respect to their promised future deliverance out of all nations, the drying of the river of Egypt and the river of Assyria, the sojourning in the wilderness the falling of the walls of Jericho at the last of the seven blasts of the seventh trumpet, which is now about to be blown. This I believe, because I find the prophecy of the future restoration of the Jews to be written very much in the language of the former redemption out of Egypt. And if the language which words the one, borrows intelligence, and illustration, and typography from the language which words the other, I believe the providential acts which shall fulfil the one, will stand in a similar relation to the providential acts which fulfilled the other. For why should not two stalks shoot out from the same seed? In the same way it is, that I suspect the Christian prophecy of the Apocalypse may come into a second service in these times of Israel’s redemption, as my author believes.

Now while I surely believe that the history of the Jewish people, while it was a great fact and lesson unto the world of God’s righteous acts, was also a typography with which he might write the mystical history of his invisible church until the time that it shall become manifest in the day of our blessed Lord’s appearing, I believe, at the same time, that the very same spiritual truths are written a hundred different ways in the history of individuals and of particular periods, line upon line, and precept upon precept; of all which the harmony in diversity the oneness in variety, gives such a demonstration of the divine Spirit as I can hardly express, it doth so pass every other form of conviction.

Of all these views Concerning the prophetic office of Christ and the prophetic character of his word, I regard his discourse to Nicodemus to be a most remarkable confirmation, wherein he not only showeth the instance of the cross under the emblem of the brazen serpent, and the work of the Spirit under the water-purifications of the law, but asserteth generally that the new birth of the Spirit and the whole spiritual life thence flowing, and our present spiritual dispensation and church, are but a part of the earthly things. The honest yet blinded Israelite came to inquire of our Lord concerning his glorious kingdom, who postponed the subject for one more immediate and more important, opening to him the spiritual meaning and spiritual promise of the earthly dispensation, which had begun with Moses, and was now arrived at the second stage of its growth, for which the word of the prophets and the dispensations of divine providence had been diligently preparing the way; against which the spiritual pride and carnal security of the Jewish rulers had been as diligently blocking up the way: wherefore it came not unto them, but passed by on the other side, and went unto the Gentiles, leaving them outcast of heaven and earth. By this high authority we are informed that our present spiritual dispensation which is wont to be interpreted as complete in itself, without any bud or promise of another, is as much preparatory to another, as was the Mosaic, which the Jews also thought perfect in itself: or rather, to speak more exactly, the dispensation from Abraham to the present time is one dispensation, which is incomplete and inexplicable but by the belief of another dispensation of glory about to follow. Our Lord here expressly declareth to Nicodemus, that all which he taught him, concerning the regeneration of the Spirit, and his own lifting up, and the light unto the Gentiles, was a part of the earthly things, and no part of the heavenly things; or in other words, that the spiritual dispensation under which we live is but the unfolding and completing of the ritual and prophetic dispensation, and can no more be separated from it, than the exposition can be separated from the text, or the resolution from the perplexed riddle.

It is manifest from our Lord’s discourse, that the spiritual dispensation to which he introduced the Jewish ruler, pertaining to the earthly things which were to be seen and known at that time in the Jewish dispensation, as the living countenance and form are to be seen through the veil which covers them. For there can be no doubt that Moses was but Christ under the veil, and the law was but the holiness of the Spirit written upon stones. The veil was taken off the face of Moses by the Prophet like unto Moses, and the gospel was discovered to be beneath it. By the coming of the Spirit the tables of stone were broken, and the writing was transferred to the fleshly tables of the heart. Christ’s incarnation completed the prophetic part of the dispensation, and sealed up the vision and the prophecy; his life fulfilled the law; and as by one man’s transgression the curse came upon us, so by one man’s obedience the curse was taken off; his death finished and accomplished the sacrifice for iniquity, and brought in an universal righteousness. By his resurrection he spoiled death, and the grave, and corruption; and by his ascension up on high, he became the High-Priest of his church to procure the forgiveness of their sins, and to shed down abundantly the gifts of righteousness and peace, to become the providence of the world, and the true King in Jeshurun. These things were all contained in the former half of the dispensation, the semblance of them appeared through the covering of the ceremonial law, the spirit of them, like the child in the womb, struggled for liberty, and the prophets, through great oppression and fainting of soul, were able to articulate the very words of it. The gospel liveth and moveth everywhere in the former dispensation, and is not to be separated from it. They are parts of one life, the former the elements of childhood, the latter the discoveries of manhood. It is one revelation from the beginning even until now, and is properly called the earthly things, in contradistinction to the heavenly things, which shall have place, when Messiah shall come in majesty and glory.

To see this thing completely, we need to ascend yet a little higher. The coming of the Son of God in flesh to offer himself for our sins, was only the manifestation or revelation of that which he had done from all eternity. The act of his intercession and mediation, yea, of his suffering and death are presupposed in the words of the first promise made to our first parents in Paradise: and from that time until now, every word of divine revelation, and every institution of divine worship, are so many manifestations of the eternal act of self-devotion for the salvation of the world, —are but the wording, or the preaching of it, the prophecy and the manifestation of its eternal reality. The gift of the law from Sinai, and the gift of the Spirit in Zion, the tabernacle in the wilderness, the temple built of stones in Jerusalem, and the spiritual temple of the Christian Church built of lively stones, are great bequests of God, purchased by the death of Christ, which was accomplished in heaven, where it was first purposed and declared by the Son, and accepted by the Father, though not accomplished upon earth till he was crucified on Mount Calvary. This is the view held forth in the Old Testament scriptures, especially in the Psalms and the Prophets, taught by our Lord in this discourse of Nicodemus, and in all his divine discourses recorded by John, and of most of the epistles of Paul it forms the introduction. I open these epistles at a venture, and I find it written in the beginning of Titus, “In hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began; but hath in due times manifested his word through preaching.” If you inquire the reason why the revelation of the whole truth was not made from the beginning, I answer that it is the prophetic method of God, which seemed best to the wisdom of God; and I doubt not, when the work is finished, will so seem to all his saints who take pleasure to inquire into the wonderful works of God. But for us, who stand midway in the work, and see but one half of it, who are of small comprehension, and very un-spiritual, it is a vain attempt to comprehend the infinite scheme of grace; and it doth better beseem us, with the Gentile apostle, to adore its infinite dimensions, than to attempt the measurement and comprehension of the whole. And yet this much I can discern, and feel free to declare, that when sin had once entered into the finished and blessed work of God’s creation, it was needful that it should run its course, and untold all its poisonous fruits, and do its worst to mar the beauty and murder the life of the goodly creatures of God, in order that its malignity, unmercifulness, hideousness, and horrid misery might be revealed and made manifest unto all the intelligent creatures of God, that they might stand amazed and aghast at the terror, and be confirmed in their hatred of the exceeding hateful thing which God hateth. This, I take it, is the cause why the manifestation of life and righteousness took such a long while to complete itself, in order that the manifestation of death and sin might complete itself. But through all the doublings of the cruel enemy the Son of God did follow him, and unto the darkest chambers he made his light to be seen, and at no time suffered this earth to be without a hope and a promise, and a holy symbol of faith. And herein lay the infinite wisdom of our prophet, in being able to preserve alive upon the earth in despite of the gates of hell, an inward life of godliness and an outward monument of mercy, a spiritual and a visible church, to make the devils to believe and tremble, the wrath of man to praise him, and the remainder of his wrath to restrain. The difficulty of such an undertaking is known only to God; and I doubt not it will be manifest hereafter unto his saints, that in this, far more than in the creation of the earth, and the stretching out of the heavens, is his almighty power revealed. It would be a long discourse, and not proper to our present aim, to show the marvellous accommodation of the divine promise to the evil plights and narrow necessities into which sin hath at different times brought the world. How the wisdom of the Saviour doth baffle the subtlety of the destroyer, and pluck the prey out of his hands. Which things I have found much cleared up in the study of the Psalms. But to return to the point in hand.

We cannot separate the ministry of our Lord, from the former dispensation which it was intended to accomplish, and we cannot separate it from the present dispensation of the Spirit, which is the disseminating abroad of the doctrine which he taught, and of the gifts which he purchased, that is of his priestly gifts by his prophetic word. Nor can we separate the dispensation of the spirit from the dispensation of the law, or the church of the Gentiles from the church of the Jews, that they should not be parts of the same redemption, parts of the same warfare, parts of the same humility and suffering, parts of the same earthly oppression of the church, with nothing of that heavenly glory and royal power, which is about to be revealed. The Jewish dispensation wanted to be uncovered of its veil, and our spiritual dispensation wanteth and longeth to be covered with an outward power and visible glory, instead of being oppressed with this body of sin and death, and trodden under foot by the powers of the present evil world. This much I draw from our Lord’s discourse with Nichodemus, that we are still conversant with the earthly things and have still the heavenly things to expect; that as much as the Jews, ought we to look forward to the glory which is to be revealed, and that it is an utter error fraught with evil consequence, to consider the incarnation of Christ as the ultimate end of the prophecies, and the utmost satisfaction of the wants of the world, All that hath yet been revealed in the Providence of God to his church, is the least half of what is promised in the word of God, and what his church should hold fast with assured faith.

Moreover, she should look upon the incarnation only as another form which the revelation took; another method of manifesting the everlasting love, and showing the eternal sacrifice which the second person of the blessed Trinity made of his honour and dignity upon our account. And she should give heed in the study of the Scriptures, to regard them as one truth in various ways manifested, one glorious person by many emblems made known, according to the word which the angel in the Apocalypse spake unto St. John, “The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” Whereby is signified that as in creation all things were not only made by him but for him, so in revelation all things were not only spoken by him in the mouth of the prophet, but for him in order to show some excellent feature of his glorious person, to declare some act of his most righteous government or make known some point of his infinite wisdom, unto the children of men. Because however it may be to the unfallen and blessed Spirits, to us it is most certainly ordained that we shall neither be able to know the secret councils of the Father, nor to receive the blessed operations of the Holy Ghost, but through the mediation of the Son, in the knowledge, and honour, and worship of whom standeth the knowledge, and honour, and worship of the Godhead. So that nothing is derogated from the Father or the Spirit, but on the contrary their true being and blessed offices are all rightly secured to them, when we say that all things were created for Christ, and that the spirit of prophecy is but the testimony of Christ.

If, then, it be true, as the revealing angel declared unto John, that the Spirit of prophecy is but the testimony of Jesus, the church should be prepared to expect, (making due allowance for the different ages in the progress of revelation,) and she should seek to find in the prophets to whom the word of the Lord came, a like Spirit, and a like manner of expressing it, to that which is found in the blessed Lord himself, and in the holy apostles. For they spoke by the same Spirit which dwelt, in him, and they brought their messages to the same fallen sinners, and for the same end of restoring them to the lost favour of God, and obedience of holiness, and future kingdom of the saints. Therefore it is to he expected they will speak the same truths though with different clearness, and make use of the same natural figures with which to illustrate it. And we ought to look carefully for that harmony and consent between the teaching of the Lord and the prophets which came before to prepare his way. And he who doth so shall not be disappointed, but will find that every parable spoken by our Lord is but the beautiful unfolding of some great truth which lay folded in the bud, until the light and life should come to perfect the beauty of its manifestation and prepare it for bearing fruit under the influences of the waters of the Holy Spirit. And thus we have the evidence of his being the word of God, and the Messiah promised to the Fathers, not only by his fulfilment of the prophecies which respect place and time, the outward actions of his life, his death and resurrection, but also by his appropriation of all the names and designations which had been given of him, and his ready use of all those words of wisdom and forms of discourse, which are to be found in the Old Testament.

Because nature did not furnish emblems enow whereby to show forth the varieties of heavenly truth which in the person of Jesus Christ were to meet together; art, divine art was called to aid, and by the constitution of the Jewish state, and the ceremonial religion, a new language was invented, which should have no meaning nor possible interpretation but in him who was to come. And a long and various history of a particular family was preserved through thousands of years, during which they were placed in all possible conditions of wanderers, captives, warriors, conquerors, as a family, as tribes, as a nation under judges, under kings, and under priests, all which history was so ordered as, in every or almost every part to be an emblem and allegory of the history of Him who was to come. So that to the stores of natural language and similitude, might be added the stores furnished by the artificial institutions of an intricate church and state, and by the various events of a most remarkable providence. Which makes the interpretation of the gospel a work of much study in the former dispensations of God, and of much satisfaction, being rightly performed. Therefore ought the interpreters of the gospel and epistles to be well skilled in all emblems and prophecies of the Old Testament, and be delivered from the narrowness and prejudices of the natural man, and enlarged by the Spirit of God into a great capacity to receive the beginning, and middle, and end, and whole progress of the scheme of the testimony of Jesus which is the Spirit of all the prophecy. And the members of the church of Christ should for themselves learn to inquire carefully into the things of the Spirit, in the midst of which they live and move and breathe and have their being, praying always that God would fill them with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. For let me tell my brethren in Christ Jesus, that in proportion as the work of the Spirit proceedeth in our souls, and we feel the oppression of the flesh and of the world, we will groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, viz. the redemption of the body. And we will perceive how all the creation around groaneth and is in bondage, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.

Then it will come to pass that the kingdom of Christ will not be a speculation with any of us, but a desire, a longing, a prayer, an assured faith, yea, a very instinct of the renewed man. Purified of all sensuality, yea, the sense crying out for purity; the flesh and heart crying out for the living God; crying, O Lord, how long, holy and true, dost thou not deliver me from this body of sin and death, dost thou not destroy these worldly powers of which my brethren and dear friends are taken captive, dost thou not make manifest thy captivity of all captivities, thy spoilation of the principalities and powers of this dark and cruel world, and enable us to sing, Oh enemy, thy destructions are come to a perpetual end! Oh death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?

§ 2. How the two opposite Systems affect the PRIESTLY Office of CHRIST.

THE priestly office of Christ hath the same relation to the conscience of man which concerneth righteousness, that the prophetical office hath to the intellect which concerneth knowledge. For there is in the nature of man a desire of righteousness of which proceedeth all discernrnent of right and wrong, with every ordinance of law and government; and of these two this seemeth to be the higher function of the soul, and there is but one higher still, the desire to live and exercise all our powers according to the light of knowledge, and by the just dictates of conscience, to which third and highest function of man the kingly office of Christ bringeth its gracious control. Now in considering the second of these, the natural conscience, I perceive that naturally it is a law unto itself, as the intellect is a light unto itself, having naturally no apprehension nor acknowledgment of the eternal, essential, and perfect holiness of God. I say not that it is not capable of education or culture, nor that it is in all men of a like force and clearness, but that it doth never of itself rise above itself, to perceive its own essential impurity and unrighteousness even in its best and purest moods. Nor by this do I mean merely that it falleth short in the execution, but that it falleth short in the idea and in the purpose, enlighten it as you will, and convince it as you will. Or in other words, the justest code which hath ever been devised in the idea of’ philosophers, or embodied in the codes of legislators, neither runs parallel with, nor ascendeth into the region of that justice or righteousness which ever proceedeth in the presence of the eternal God. And this is what the divines mean by the original sinfulness of human nature, the native deceitfulness and wickedness of the human heart.

Yet while I believe and assert that there is in the conscience no natural perception of the true character of sin, as an original and unstaunched fountain in the soul of man, I perceive that there is a great desire after that idea of righteousness which it doth perceive, below which it never falleth without a great sense of pain and trouble, which we call remorse. This is best perceived in the beginning of life, before evil becomes habitual, and to follow wickedness hath become to us like a second nature. But it never dies, and I have oft seen it the strongest in the wickedest, when you touch them upon a part of their nature which hath not grown callous by many wounds. As if they still kept a Goshen-spot of light within the bounds of their darkened consciousness, whither they might betake themselves for consolation. Speaking of men in general, it seemeth to me that they cannot live without such a spot, either in the present possession, or in the future prospects of their soul. And when conscience hath no light at all left within her quarters, nor dawn, nor hopeful star of a morning yet to come, the man then becomes desperate, and careth not for his life any more, but desireth to die.

The ignorance of a universal and common sinfulness con-joined with this desire after righteousness of some kind or other, doth bring all men into the condition, and even into the necessity of imagining a rule of righteousness or standard of holiness, which the conscience may take pleasure in contemplating, and do her endeavour to attain. And this I hold to be as universal an attribute of man, as the desire of knowledge or the desire of power, one of those fundamental laws which define our fallen being. Now this ideal rule of righteousness which the conscience of every man by its best endeavour frameth to itself, is what the scriptures denominate self-righteousness, and the works which proceed from it are called dead works, and the conscience while in this state, is said to be defiled with dead works; from which it must be purged in order to serve the living God: now this is the office of Christ considered as the Priest, to purge the conscience from dead works that we may serve the living God. At present I do not speak so much of the sacrifice of himself by which he atoneth for our sins, as of the application of the blood of this sacrifice to cleanse away the pollution of the conscience, or to convince the soul of its native and original sinfulness.

But this is not the whole account of the priestly office of Christ, although it be almost the whole of what is ordinarily by the church regardeth as such. For as the office of Christ the Prophet knows no bounds nor limitations, save the complete expulsion of darkness and error from the mind of man, so the priestly office of Christ knows no bounds nor limitations, save the complete expulsion of sin from the being and habitation of man, and the restoration of all things, to that spotless purity and sinless perfection which they had at their first creation, with whatever accession of power and glory they may have acquired in the work of regeneration and restitution. Of this restitution we have the first stage, in the gift of the Holy Ghost, by which we are born, anew and prepared for the kingdom of heaven. This is commonly regarded, with what justice we shall hereafter observe, as done upon the soul, and not in any respect upon the body; which all agree to defer until the resurrection. And as the resurrection is supposed to concern the body only, so it is inferred, that the regeneration concerns the soul only; a distinction, as we conceive, more simple than true, and repugnant both to reason and experience, as it is inconsistent with all the scriptures. But whether the account given of the exact effect and operation of the regeneration and resurrection be true or not, it is never to be doubted that these are two great, successive acts in the Holy Priesthood of Christ, which ought to be considered apart. And it seems to me that, besides these two, there is but another, which is, the purging and cleansing of the earth, and all the creatures which were made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him that subjected them; in hope that the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. And when this hath been accomplished by our purifying Priest, then, it seemeth to me, that his priestly office is concluded and completed, and the kingdom in a fit state to be given up to the Father. These three acts of the priestly office of Christ we shall now touch a little in order; showing how each of them is delivered from a cloud, and illustrated beautifully by the views of his second advent and kingdom, which we uphold.

Now, forasmuch as the church, labouring under her present dimness concerning the future advent of Christ and his glorious kingdom, hath been much taken up with the former advent, and led greatly to exaggerate the importance of the out-pouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, that first act of the priestly office of Christ, under which we now live; it is hardly to be expected that much should be found needing here to be reformed by the views which we now offer. But as no important error in the system can long exist without being every where felt, I shall be able to show, in respect to the giving of the Holy Spirit, some very important changes which the scripture view of that subject hath undergone, through the hiding of the light of the glory of his second advent and kingdom.

I. To a fallen creature, like man, whose conscience hath become darkened and defiled, as hath been set forth above, a necessary accompaniment of the priesthood is the revelation of a law. If the pure and perfect type of righteousness, according to which the Priest is to restore all things, live no longer in the conscience, nor be realized in the will, then is it necessary to give it an outward existence in a written revelation, or living personification, or both. Now in respect to the revelation of the law, it properly belongeth to his prophetical office, and consisteth of all those parts of the word of God, which being wholly independent of space and time, apply themselves to the pure reason; while by being presented imbedded in the circumstances of space and time, they give demonstration and satisfaction to the lower faculties of our nature as they pass inward to the reason. This law is perfect righteousness, defining the condition of a perfectly holy man; the pure and unfallen reason, in the light of which, our conscience perceiveth its own fallen condition, its defilement, its death, “The law revived and I died.” But the pure and perfect law serveth at the best no higher end than to slay the self-righteousness of man, and can never be used for a higher end. If you try to bring life out of it, or hope, or consolation, you utterly mistake its power, and miscalculate its effects; and will end in corrupting and debasing it down to the level of the apprehension, or even of the performance of men; buttressing that very self-sufficiency which it was given to overthrow, and sanctifying that vile stable which it was given to cleanse.

To have given such a law of righteousness, without giving at the same time power to keep it, would have been to reveal to the conscience her death, without revealing any hope of her resurrection from death; to have left her plunged in the blackness and darkness of despair, with which, we observed above, the conscience of no man can dwell. And here it is that the character of the Priest properly begins in redeeming us from that guilt, to the existence of which he hath in the office of our prophet brought us to be conscious. Now this office of Redeemer consists of two parts, first, in redeeming us from the guilt, and, secondly, from the power of sin; the one to justify, the other to sanctify; the former proceeding from the virtue of his death, the latter from the power of his resurrection. Of the former I have nothing to say; being fully satisfied with the thorough riddance and clearance which our reformers made of it, out of the hands of Roman crafts men, and out of the midst of Roman rubbish. But of the second part, I have to observe, that, as under the law it pertained to the High Priest, first to offer the sacrifice of atonement for the whole congregation, and likewise to proceed with the blood of the sacrifice into the Holy of Holies, in order to make intercession before the Lord: so to our High Priest it appertaineth not only to have offered his own body as the one sacrifice which hath for ever perfected all them that are sanctified; thereby opening the closed and barred gates of the divine favour to all who believe on his name; but also, besides this, to be continually employed within the veil of the heavens, interceding on their account, and presenting the incense of their prayers, and the odours of their faith, and hope, and charity. Now it is very evident that before any such odours of good works can ascend unto the divine intercessor for presentation in the Most Holy Presence, it is necessary that there should be afforded unto the believer, power to perform the same; for as much as it hath been said, that in us dwelleth naturally no power to perform, nor even in our conscience any power to discern such righteousness as the most righteous God may accept. Here then is an intermediate function of the priestly office intervening between the atonement and the intercession, or rather I should say the first part of the intercessory office, which is to put into his censer the incense of his own merits, and in virtue thereof to obtain not only the forgiveness of our sins which appertaineth to his death, but likewise the gift of the Holy Ghost which appertaineth to the power of his resurrection. Wherefore it is not only written “that he ascended up on high leading captivity captive, but that he received gifts for men, even the rebellious, that God might dwell in the midst of them.” It belongeth not to this but to another place to speak of the Holy Ghost; yet was it necessary to say so much in order to express a most important part of the priestly office of Christ which is not sufficiently attended to, but which is, I think, in scripture the most frequently insisted upon under this form of expression, “He baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.” And accordingly we find the fact to have been, that the disciples were forbidden to commence their active ministry until they should receive power from on high; which power was given to them on the day of Pentecost.

Now this is the first defect which I have observed both in the circulating and in the written theology of our churches, the omission, I mean, of Christ’s office in baptising with the Holy Ghost; whose influences I think are rather regarded to come of his own intention and motive, than as proceeding from the Father and the Son, and virtually since the resurrection, under the administration of the Son, to whom “all power is given in heaven and in earth.” An omission which, if, as I judge, it do actually exist, is of great loss to the church; to whom it could be no mean encouragement to know, that the bestowal of the Spirit is in the same hands which were pierced for her, and upon the palms of which is engraven the love of Zion. This omission, it appeareth to me, proceedeth from our not bearing always in mind that Jesus is a Priest after the order of Melchisedek; that is, at once a Priest and a King, in every act a Priest and a King, not only Christ but also Lord. Insomuch that Peter in one of his sermons held at Jerusalem in the days of Pentecost, declareth that “God hath exalted Him a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance and remission of sins unto Israel.” This kingly office having received from God at his ascension, he doth even now exert in granting these two things, repentance and remission of sins to all who believe; and moreover, in bestowing the Holy Spirit to regenerate and build up the new man after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness. And it is very sweet to me to know, and feel, that my Saviour is become King, and is presently exercising kingly sovereignty over the spiritual world, being able, and being willing to grant the blessings of his priesthood to all who believe on his incarnation, and desire the righteousness which cometh of that faith. It is for every one to judge of this matter for himself; but I return to declare my conviction, that this great and capital head of spiritual doctrine “that Christ baptizeth with the Holy Ghost,” is a good deal overshadowed by a much lower and less worthy notion, that the Holy Ghost, as it were of his own will, and without any respect to that divine relationship, doth by means of the written word work the fruits of holiness in our own souls. From whence it hath naturally come to pass that the written word which is the means in the hand of the Spirit, hath come to stand in the room of the living Word and Mediator, who is to the Holy Spirit, what his Father was to Him, the dispenser, the sovereign dispenser of his power. And whence it hath proceeded that the kingly office should have been thus obscured in the priestly, I have no way of accounting, otherwise than by this, that his kingly office hath been altogether much obscured, by the neglecting or explaining away of those passages in the Old and New Testaments which have main respect unto his second advent when he shall be revealed as a King.

That same retrospective attitude of the church, of which we have seen the evil effects, upon the prophetical office, that exclusive study of the incarnation of Christ to become the sacrifice, hath brought it to pass, that the part of the priestly office which regardeth the sacrifice hath been magnified over and above the part of the priestly office which regardeth the King, and looketh forward for its manifestation to the day of his second advent. And the only way which suggesteth itself to me of joining the kingly into indissoluble union with the priestly office, in the great matter of our present spiritual life, is to bring forward into their proper prominency those passages of holy writ which respect the priestly and kingly advent, without casting into the shade those which respect the prophetic and priestly advent.

And here I may go back a step and make a similar remark upon the divorcement of the law from the lawgiver, and of both from Christ. This inquiry in which I am engaged, needeth a sagacious spirit, a single eye, and a delicate hand, requiring me to make a continual estimate of the current theology, and bringing me into the midst of the prejudices of living men, and present times; the more may the Lord deliver me from all malice and unighteousness, and enable me to discern truly between His word and His people, between His church as it ought to be, and His church as it actually is. Well then; I do certainly feel persuaded that Moses is some way regarded as our law-giver, and Christ as our Saviour from the law; or rather that the law under which we are placed holdeth of the former dispensation, and the gospel of the latter dispensation. Which not only contradicteth Paul’s express declaration, “For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.” Heb. vii. 12. and his argument in the eighth and ninth chapters of the same epistle, where he sets himself to prove the faultiness of the former testament and its need of being set right or reformed by another testament, which was made unalterable by the death of the testator: but from whence ariseth an antagonist feeling between law and gospel which confuseth many people, and in Satan’s hands is made an open door to antinomianism. Now, however necessary it was for the apostles when showing the impossibility of justification by the works of the law, to rest their argument upon the mosaic law in which the party with whom they reasoned, did repose their trust, I think, for us Christian divines, who have not the same form of antagonist, to do the same, is greatly to weaken our own argument, and to prejudice the cause of godliness which is committed to our trust. Because no one will say that the law written upon the two tables of stone, though sufficient in its kind, and perfect in its end, as all God’s revelations must be, is at all to be compared in respect to the force of its precepts and the spirituality of ith application, with those laws delivered by our Lord to his disciples in the days of his flesh, or to those which the Holy Spirit spake by the mouth of his servants the apostles.

The moral law of the old dispensation, is to the moral law of the new dispensation, what the gospel under the former, is to the gospel under the latter; a writing of the same for a younger period, even the infancy of the church. Now, no one would return to their rudiments of knowledge and conscience received in infancy, but press forward to a higher, and a purer, and more comprehensive, and more manly form of the same. Yet this is exactly what we do when we rest our laws upon that form which was given by Moses, instead of resting them upon that form which was given by Christ in the days of his flesh, or rather I should say at Pentecost, when in his character of Lord, he shed down the Spirit, and the power, and the law of holiness upon his church. Christ is my law-giver, and the words written by the Holy Spirit in the books of the New Testament are my written law; but my living law is the Holy Spirit in my soul bearing testimony to every case as it ariseth. We have a law-giver, and a written law, and we have an interpreter of it, and there needeth no casuistry nor casuists. The Holy Ghost serveth us in that capacity. To convince the natural conscience of a sinner therefore, of its sinfulness, I would not be for going to the ten commandments, whereof he may have kept the very letter, and be a greater sinner than he who hath kept none of them (as the Pharisee was a greater sinner and further from the kingdom of heaven than the publican); but I would take him to the words of Christ and his apostles which express it spiritually, and directly address the conscience and say, Brother, feelest thou thus to thine enemy, dost thou thus to thine enemy; feelest thou thus to him that hateth thee? &c. And I would take him to the life of Christ and say, Brother, livest thou thus? thus communest thou with God? thus bearest thou a world’s indignity? thus art thou in agony for a world’s salvation? thus bemoanest thou the hidings of thy Father’s countenance? And so would I find law and life, precept and example combined together, and come down with all the power of a personal case upon the person with whom I treated.

This divorcement of the law-giver from the law, and both from the person of the Saviour, whence many consequences that I have not time to follow out do arise, proceedeth from the same cause mentioned above, as having produced the like divorcement of the King from the Priest, in the bestowal of power to perceive the purity of the law and observe its commandments; that is, from forgetting, or in a great degree overlooking his office as the Judge, and explaining away the passages which relate thereto. The common system cannot afford sufficient prominency to the judgment, conceiving it to be the work of a very brief instant, at most a day; and as hath been remarked, doth not connect the events of that day so much with the Judge as with the judged, to whom it is a most important and decisive act, to Him as it were but the occupation of an hour or a day. And, because there is a very great portion of scripture which speaketh of that judgment in a state of long continuance, and of that holy law in a state of exact fulfilment, and of the blessedness thence resulting to the earth, under the judge and law-giver and king, the abetters of the present system are fain to hide that large portion of Scripture from their observation, silently to pass it over, or diligently to explain it away in some other than the literal sense. But the system whereof our author sheweth the orthodoxy puts this whole subject in a worthier point of light, and gives body and substance to the whole, by presenting us the royal Judge coming to execute judgment by visible acts upon the earth, and after having consumed those who will not return from their rebellion, proceeding to judge the world in righteousness and the people with equity; establishing that law of holiness triumphant which is now trampled under foot, and by its sweet influences, producing all love, and unity, and blessedness amongst men. This gives an end and an honour to the law of righteousness, and to the law-giver, which cannot otherwise in any way be obtained. It giveth manifestation to the judgment and to the fruits of the judgment. It condemneth the sinfulness of the nations, it glorifieth the justice of God, and over all it glorifieth his mercy. And it establisheth the righteousness which is by faith, and realizeth the law and constitution of God by an actual object, by a long-enduring condition of things which the earth in those long ages shall witness. And thus here again the remedy is the same as before, in turning the attention of the church to the future advent of Christ as the judge and king of the quick, instead of restricting their attention to his former advent as a judged and condemned criminal. For these two we shall see as we advance, are the two pivots upon which the gate of sound doctrine and holy living will turn sweetly and safely; though it will neither turn sweetly nor safely upon one only.

Though in opening up these two observations I have touched upon the evils which flow unto the church from this obscuration of our High Priest’s authority and power, I deem it advisable to open them a little more fully. By those only who know how an error or omission in these, the great foundations of Christian doctrine, comes to be felt in the superstructure of Christian life, and to affect the condition of the church, will the importance and truth of these two observations be justified.

The right understanding of the person and offices of Christ is, the right understanding of the person and offices of the Father and of the Holy Spirit; and it is, moreover, the right understanding of our own person and offices, as men renewed after his image, and members of his Holy Church From the forgetfulness of the former great relationship between Him and the Spirit, and that he is a King in bestowing the benefits of his Priesthood, I make no doubt that two errors, in the common feeling of the Church, if not in her current system of doctrine, have originated; of which the first is, that the gift of the Holy Spirit is an uncertainty, is something which hath to come, and is not yet come, and into the coming of which we have no insight, nor ground of certain hope, or assurance. In support of which opinion they quote that text of our Lord, spoken to Nicodemus, “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” John iii. 8. Now if by this uncertainty they mean that the Spirit is not to be calculated upon according to any rule of human wisdom, nor obtained in any course of nature, nor drawn down by any work of man, nor with the use of any outward means of grace necessarily connected, I agree with them; and hold that, as the gift of the Son was wholly of the will of the Father, with the due obedience and consent of the Son, so is the gift of the Spirit wholly of the will of the Son, raised unto that royal prerogative by the satisfaction of the Father, yet with the due obedience and consent of the Holy Spirit, who speaketh nothing of himself, but taketh of the things of Christ, as Christ spake nothing of himself, but in all things bare testimony of the Father.

But if by this uncertainty they mean that we are wholly in the dark, and, without a ground of hope, must wait on till the time of his coming, as, I think, is commonly believed by the spiritual, they err grievously, and do exceedingly dishonour both the Son and to the Spirit, and, above all, occasion great perplexity to the Church, and throw a great stumbling-block in the way of the impenitent. For the Spirit is in his hands who loved us to the death; the Spirit is in his hands who died for us; the Spirit is in his hands who intercedeth for us; who hath constituted the Church for a dwelling place to the Spirit; and who, in admitting any member to his Church, doth signify and seal to him, not only all the benefits of his death, but also all the benefits of his resurrection; amongst which one of the principal is, the gift of the Holy Ghost. So that, in the same sense in which the written word doth represent to us the freedom which we have unto the Living Word, and press upon us by all means to be joined unto him, I believe the Sacrament of Baptism doth represent to us the freedom which we have unto the Holy Spirit, and cordially entreat us to accept of all the blessings of the regenerated Church. And so we are left, in looking for the Holy Spirit, not in the state of an uncertainty, or dark mystery, but have a clear revelation, and are given as great an assurance, and applied to with as powerful means, as are consistent with the freedom of our will. It is a very great matter indeed to know that what we need, our elder brother hath to bestow, and hath a desire to bestow upon us. And it is a very different matter, to know not where that which we need is to be found, or whether we may presume to expect it at all. Let no one suppose by this that I take the gift of the Holy Spirit out of the hands of our King to give it into the hands of a priesthood, or embody it in a visible symbol. I do place it in the hands of our King, to be given, at his pleasure, to those who believe upon his name, and are obedient to his ordinances and commandments. But who is that King? who but our Saviour, who but our Redeemer, who but Jesus the most bountiful, the most gracious to man! And where would man have it, with so much safety, with so much wisdom, with so much advantage to the world, reposed, as in his hands who died to redeem the world.

It is a poor compensation, either to the injured prerogative of Christ, or to the disappointed condition of his Church, to direct her attention to the written word, as the appointed means by which the Spirit worketh the regeneration and edification of the body of Christ. A means is at the will and posterior to the will of him that useth it; and, unless we know something of the gracious disposition of that will, it availeth little to know the means with which it serveth itself. That which they say concerning the written word is true, while the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son, and the power given unto the Son, in virtue of Mediator, to baptize with the Holy Ghost, is also a truth; but the one of these truths is not the same with the other, neither will the former serve the ends of the latter, or stand for both. The prerogative pertaining to the LIVING WORD, of sending forth the Spirit, is greater than, and includeth in it, the power of the written Word to feed and nourish the Spirit; but the latter includeth not the former. Now I am strongly convinced, that, through the eclipse of this royal prerogative in the priestly office of Christ, the written Word hath come to be exaggerated into an importance which it can never bear, and that the progress of spiritual life is made dependant upon a certain intercourse of the natural faculties of the mind with the knowledge which is therein revealed: and to this source I attribute that notion of faith which is taking such deep root in our church of Scotland, as if it were no more than the assent of the mind unto the testimony of the Word. From whence it hath come to pass, by necessary consequence, that preaching is fast becoming an exercise of the natural faculties of the preacher, to make manifest to the natural faculties of the hearers, good grounds upon which he should give his assent unto the testimony: instead of being the voice of Christ, the Prophet, Priest, and King of his Church, speaking by the authority of his minister, to the faith, love, and reverence of his people: the Holy Spirit in the minister taking of the things of Christ, and showing them unto the same Spirit in the hearer. Preaching, especially in our Church, has become an offspring of the understanding exercising itself about the revelations of the Gospel; instead of being the offspring of the Spirit, bestowed by our King and Priest, from faith to faith: and the consequence hath been, the upbuilding of the understanding, instead of the upbuilding of the believing Church; and the end will be, an intellectual apostacy, instead of a house all prepared to receive its Lord and Master.

I am not ignorant that spiritual religion hath a demonstration to the natural man, and can present a stronger pleading to his mind, and to his heart, and to his social affections, and to his political well-being, than any other system of truth; in which belief I allow that our preachers have laboured well, and won to themselves much renown over the infidelity of these days: so hath it a demonstration to the very sense, in the health, and comeliness, and tranquillity, and strength, and other fruits of that temperance and wholesome discipline which it imposeth upon the body: but neither the one nor the other of these demonstrations have any power to regenerate and quicken the soul, which cometh only by the preaching of the righteousness, which is by faith upon a crucified and risen Redeemer, to whom every knee must bow, and every tongue confess, ere we can be visited with any fruit of his mediation. This gradual declension into the region of the natural intellect hath come about, I conceive, from our forgetting that prerogative of Christ to be in every act of his priesthood also a King; which being borne in mind, no one would for a moment dream of obtaining the Holy Spirit by merely conning the pages of a book, or hearing a man’s speculations, critical, or intellectual, or sentimental, thereupon; but we would look for Him in the exercise of faith upon the Prophet, speaking in his word and by his faithful ministers; in the crucified and risen Priest, dispensing the gifts of the Holy Ghost to those who believe in his name and do his commandments: and the Holy Spirit, instead of being connected in no relationship with any other person of the Trinity, or bound to the pages of a book, would be restored to that proper relationship to the Son, to that witness of the Son, in which he hath been revealed as delighting to exercise himself. I could, in like manner, open the evils which are flowing into the Church by the disseveration of the law giver from the law, and of both from the Saviour and Author of eternal righteousness; but that I perceive I have much ground to travel over. And yet I know not what to do; for there is such a subtle mimickry of the truth about the intellectualism of the times, that unless you be at great pains to distinguish and explain things, one half of the Church holdeth you to be a traducer, and another half holdeth you to be a fool. But, Wisdom is justified of her children.

So much and much more if space permitted, have I to say upon the prejudice which the priestly office of Christ hath undergone, through that oblivion of his kingly and judicial office which hath come over the church, by reason of her neglect, unbelief, and spiritual annihilation of those large portions of scripture which make known his second advent and set him forth as a Priest, not upon his cross, but upon his throne, not humbled and rejected of men, but ruling in righteousness from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth. In all that I have said, I have confined my self to that first province of his priestly power which concerneth the regeneration and sanctification of the soul; and I have now to treat and enlarge upon the two other provinces thereof, which our modern theology, though making such a parade of the written word, and the written word only, hath almost suffered to drop out of the mind and memory of the church. I mean the redemption of the body, and the redemption of the earth on which we dwell.

II. When the eternal Son of God came to be the sacrifice for the sins of his church and of the world, he took unto himself not only a reasonable soul, but a human body, passive flesh, the whole nature of the seed of Abraham; and the Holy Spirit, by whose power he was conceived in the Virgin’s womb, and exercised all the offices of his earthly ministry, and offered himself without spot unto the holiness of God, did preserve in perfect purity and separation from sin, both his body and his spirit, that is, his whole humanity. Now because Christ in the days of his flesh was the type of all his people, the captain of their salvation, the author and finisher of their faith, I do most certainly conclude, that the, same Holy Spirit, when by our King he is commissioned to beget in any of his elect people, the child of Christ, the new man created in righteousness and true holiness, doth not take effect upon our spirit only, but upon our body also, upon our whole fallen humanity, to restrain it, and to sanctify it, and to prepare it for eternal glory. It is one of the evil fruits of our spiritualizing whatever will spiritualize, and neglecting the rest, to have spread abroad the notion that the Spirit operateth upon the soul primarily and upon the body only in a very inferior degree; and that while the soul is purified in some sort, and changed, the body lags far behind in an obstinate love of the fallen creature which death only can dissolve. Whereas I believe it to be according to the scripture, that the whole humanity is operated upon by the new law and life of the Holy Spirit, which Christ planteth in all them who believe. The law of the flesh, or of the animal, or natural man, which the apostle Paul so oft declareth to be opposed to the law of the Spirit, and enmity to God, is alas! not confined to the bodily instincts and senses, but extendeth to the desires of the mind and to the inclinations of the heart, and to the will of man in his fallen and unrenewed state. Whence we find our Lord referring all abominable lusts to their origin in the heart, and Paul enumerating the desires of the mind along with the desires of the flesh, and pronouncing upon them the same sentence of condemnation. And the law of the Spirit to which they are in continual opposition, is not any power or principle inherent in the invisible part of man, but the disposition of the Holy Ghost within us, the motions of that eternal life which cometh by faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, into whose name, that is, into whose spiritual power we were baptized. Whence we find that Paul speaks of the body of the baptized as married unto the body of Christ by his resurrection from the dead, and again of our bodily members as the members of Christ, and again of our conscience purged from dead works, and our bodies washed with pure water, and again he intreateth them to present themselves, “body, soul, and spirit, a living sacrifice unto God.” I hold it therefore, to be a point of sound theology, that our royal High Priest when he baptizeth with the Holy Ghost, hath a respect to the body as well as to the soul, to the whole undivided humanity of man, and that their purification proceedeth pari passu, and not separately, —the spirit now, the body hereafter. So that the life of the Son of man, and his experience of agony, both inward and outward, —horrors of darkness and clouds of grief within, as well as pains and afflictions and torments without, is the pattern to his children of the sufferings both of soul and body, in the spirit and in the flesh, which they have to endure in following his steps. Between him and his people there is no difference in respect to that which is observable; while there is the utmost difference in respect to the principle and cause; in the Son of man the cause was the imputation of the sins of the people, in our case it is indwelling sin, and the sin which is around us. But the same Spirit that enabled him to suffer, enableth us to suffer; and to suffer for the same hatred of sin and continual contention against its power in us and in others. In our humanity we have the first fruits of the Spirit; but the Spirit within us groans, being straitened, vexed, and almost quenched, by the vileness of the habitation; and these groanings are his intercession for us. “We who have the first fruits of the Spirit do groan within our selves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of the body.” And the Spirit is therefore called “the earnest (or earnest-penny) of the promised inheritance,” “the seal with which we are sealed till the day of redemption.” And herein consisteth our humility in being burdened with this tabernacle, and with all the evil associations, confederacies, and temptations of the world and Satan, with which it bringeth us to be acquainted and familiar. Wherefore if these things be so, it is clear that the priestly office of Christ to sanctify whom as King he pleaseth to sanctify, regardeth the body no less than the soul of his people; and must be studied with as diligent a reference to the one as to the other.

Let us now proceed in our observation of that Life which is the great ensample of the life and history of every saint, and of the whole church, in order that we may observe the consummation and completion of the priestly work, whose beginnings and first fruits we have thus explained. Our Mediator having endured the living ordeal of the Prophet, offered himself as a sacrifice upon the cross without spot; and his body was laid in the grave but saw no corruption, because he had set the Lord continually before him; and whither went his soul? to paradise, according to his own word unto the thief; to hell, according to the creed; and according to the common interpretation of both by the Catholic church, to the place of separate spirits, whither also went the thief along with him. Here then, as I judge, is the first point at which a good theologian or true believer in revelation will contemplate any separation in the humanity of our Lord, between the reasonable soul and the human body; and consequently in the humanity of any of those who by faith are brought into the conformity of his death. At which stage I will allow that the work of the Spirit to the soul and to the body of man, may, and ought to be considered apart; in the separate consideration of which nothing will so effectually serve us, as the meditation of our Lord’s state during this same interval of separation between his body and soul. And in this meditation I can assert, first, negatively, that his separate reasonable soul not ascend unto his Father, because he said to Mary Magdalene after the resurrection, “I am not yet ascended to my Father.” Which express declaration of his own lips is amply confirmed by that large and various discourse which he held with his disciples in the interval between the going forth of Judas, and the act of his betrayal. In which discourse, “the little time” that he was to be absent from them “because he went unto the Father,” can by no means refer to the hours between his death and resurrection, but to this present time of the Comforter’s ministry, during which his church should be waiting, and longing, and pained for his appearance, as a travailing woman is for the appearance of her child. “A little time” he thought it was to be, and a little time his disciples expected it to be, and a little time it is twice called in the Apocalypse; but for our faithlessness have we been kept so long wandering in this wilderness, and because of the long-suffering of God, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come unto him and live.” During all this time I reckon that the souls of the righteous have been in that separate state, call it paradise, or call it hell, whither our Lord’s soul descended, while his body lay in the tomb; and in like manner the body of his church lieth scattered like bones about the grave’s mouth, under the power and dominion of corruption. In the sixteenth Psalm, on which this article of faith chiefly resteth, it is acknowledged as a great act of divine recompense unto his righteousness, that his soul was not left in hell; and the same of his body’s not seeing corruption. And as the latter boon hath not been yielded to any of mortals save to Enoch and Elias (what the Catholic church asserteth about the Virgin Mary, being, as I conceive, no better than a legend) all the rest of men being permitted to lie under the power of corruption unto this day, save those who arose with the Lord; so do I reckon that, because their souls are detained in that place of separate spirits, apart from their bodies and from the human presence of their Lord and King, whose humanity is at the right hand of the Father, there is occasioned thereby a diminution of their blessedness, which causeth them continually, from beneath the altar of his mediation, to pray for the Lord’s coming, and to rejoice so mightily when the seventh trumpet of his appearance and his reign is blown upon the earth. This however, I say, without for a moment doubting their blessedness in that separate estate, according to the kind of blessedness which they are able to contain and be filled withal. But, upon the grounds just stated, and because the uniform tenour of the hope of all saints in Holy Scripture terminateth in the coming of the Lord, and the resurrection of the body, I have the boldness to assert, that the separation of the soul from the body, the abode of the former in paradise, and of the latter under the dominion of corruption, is not a completion of blessedness, but containeth a let and barrier of Satan unbroken down, and which shall not be broken down until the Lord cast him out of the earth and the air into the bottomless pit, and so retrieve from the dust the bodies of his chosen, and call their spirits from that place whither he descended, and which the ancient fathers thought to be in the heart of the earth, and so also in some sort, within Satan’s dominion, who is the ruler of the darkness of this world.

Forasmnuch then, as the sanctification of the body is a benefit of our Lord’s priesthood no less than the sanctification of the Spirit, and that the whole work is not completed at death, but in the resurrection of the righteous; I hold, that an integrant part, yea, the very chief work of his priesthood, and the consummation of it, is done by the resurrection of the body from the dust of the earth, and by the enlargement of the soul from that state of incomplete blessedness in which it is presently detained. Whence we find the redemption of the body assigned as the time of the adoption; “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” Rom. viii. 23; that we have received at present only the “spirit of adoption,” verse 15. To the same effect is it written, that not until “the coming of the Lord Jesus with all his saints,” are we presented “unblamable in holiness before God, even our Father,” Thess. iii. 13; that till then also the inheritance is reserved in heaven, and we kept for it by the power of God, till it be revealed in the last times, at the appearing of Jesus Christ, 1 Pet. i. 3-8; that this also is the condition to which we are elected and predestinated, Eph. i. 4, 5, 10. And in truth I may say, there is not such a thing in Scripture, as the termination of our hopes, or the sealing of our sanctification as complete, until the resurrection from the dead and the inheritance of the kingdom. And of Christ even (to recur to the great prototype of the Church’s condition), we find it not only said, that he offered himself by the Eternal Spirit a sacrifice, but, “that he was declared to be the Son of God with power (that is, adopted as to his manhood), according to the Spirit of Holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.” And, in like manner, we believe that the present sealing and earnest of the Spirit is but the first fruits of that gift of the Spirit, whereof the residue is in the hands of our King, to pour it out without measure in the day in which the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live.

From the same constant respect which the office of our Priest hath to this its final consummation, we find that in his office of Prophet he directs so much of the attention of the Church to the great act of his resurrection; insomuch that it was to the resurrection of Christ the apostles gave testimony after the day of Pentecost, and it was Christ and the resurrection which Paul preached at Athens. And hence it is, that the power of the resurrection is placed generally higher than the power of his death, and necessary to enter into the fellowship thereof; “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection (εξανασασις, the resurrection out from amongst) of the dead;” Phil. iii. 10,11. where the attainment of the resurrection is made the climax and consummation of all attainments. And, in like manner, a much higher grade of blessings is made by Paul dependant on the life of Christ than on his death; “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” Rom. v. 10. Now, that the whole mystery of the resurrection of Christ, with all the varied uses in the spiritual life to which it is made available by the holy apostles, is departed and lost at present from the current preaching of the church. I have no doubt. And I believe the reason to be, that the common system, which embraces the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked in one act, and for one end, of judgment, has had the evil effect of turning the minds of men away from those manifold parts of scripture which speak of the resurrection as the great reward of faith, and peculiar privilege of Christ’s elect church; being for quite another object and end than the general resurrection of the rest of the dead, whereof exceeding little indeed is written in scripture. Not that I have any doubt of the latter, or would disparage its awful dignity, for the end of judging the wicked and the great multitude of the righteous who shall have lived during the millennium, and constituting the eternal and unchangeable destinies of the righteous and the wicked, of beautifying and glorifying the place of the latter, and making miserable and abominable the place of the former, and for many other great ends and mysteries of God’s providence, whereof I cannot now speak more particularly. Nevertheless, I think it a great and essential error, to have confounded this with the first resurrection, that special privilege and prerogative of the ransomed and redeemed church, to be raised triumphant over death, and the grave, and the power of hell, and to have dominion over them for a great season in the sight of God and of all the intelligent host of heaven. And this is the second province of the priestly office of Christ, which the present system of opinions concerning his second advent hideth, and which the more orthodox and ancient opinions maintained by our author would restore, to the glory of his mediatorial office. And there is yet a third.

III. The third subject of the priestly office of our Lord is, the redemption and purification of the earth whereon we dwell, and which, with all that it contains, was originally put under the dominion of Adam, as it is written in the eighth Psalm: “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers; the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all things under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowl of the air, and the fish of the Sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. O Lord our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!” Psalm viii. 3-9. This is but an expansion of the original act of man’s investiture, as it is written amongst the archives of creation: “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Gen. i. 26. Now, as Christ came forth to redeem from the power of Satan that which Satan had usurped, and wholly to destroy the works of the devil, and to reinstate man in his lost estate, we surely conclude that his work will not cease and determine until this world whereon we dwell shall have been delivered from the defilement and the oppression of sin. And to this agreeth the reasoning of the apostle, in the second chapter of the Hebrews, where he takes hold of that very portion of the eighth Psalm, and thereby proves that, in the world, or age, to come, Christ will actually be seen invested with that very sovereignty, of which the first man was dispossessed by the subtlety of the tempter. And the apostle in that place argues that, because they did not then see all things put under him, it was certain that it would be so seen in that future age which was put in subjection to Messiah. And I now argue, in like manner, that, because we still behold not that complete subjection, it is yet outstanding, as a part of the great completion: and that all which hath yet been manifested of his power in the church is but the first fruits of that harvest which he is yet to reap from his humiliation unto the death. In which place the apostle immediately proceeds further to argue, that his brethren shall be sharers, or fellow-heirs, with him therein, deriving this blessed conclusion from the mystery of his incarnation, and from the identity of our spiritual life with his. And, the more to confirm this, as a great end of his mediatorial work, he represents, in another place, the whole creation as groaning and travailing in bondage until the day of the manifestation of the sons of God: “For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, because (in hope that) the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” Rom. viii. 19-22. And that this is spoken of some mystery very different from the first resurrection, which we have set down as the second province of his priestly office, he maketh clear, by the verse which follows, wherein he makes the distinction in express terms; “And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Rom. viii. 23.

For I set this down also as a part of his priestly rather than of his kingly office, because if any separation can be made betwixt these two, it is this, that the one is virtually the preparation for the other, righteousness for power, purity for peace, although actually they are ever seen conjoined; for he is a Priest after the order of Melchisedek (Psalm cx.) a Priest upon his throne (Zech. vi. 13.); or, in other words, it may be said, that by the sacrifice of the priest he entereth into the combined office of priest and king. It is in virtue of that sacrifice, because he humbled himself to the death, that he hath been so greatly exalted as our mediatorial king. And it is by his having overcome sin in the flesh and upon the earth, that he hath acquired the right to expel sin out of the flesh and out of the earth. It is to the act of expelling them by a greater outpouring of the regenerating Spirit, than that of Pentecost, that I now refer. Up to which point the kingly office is seen in the priestly; from that time forth the priestly shall be seen in the kingly.

Now with respect to this great work of our High Priest in purifying the earth, I see it to have been a constituent part of the mystery from the very beginning. The first sacrifice consisted not only of blood, in token of our holding present life and receiving future life, by virtue of the sacrifice offered before the foundation of the world; but it consisted of the fruits of the earth also, in token that the vegetable life which the earth held, and the prospective purification which it was to receive, were both in virtue of the same great sacrifice. Abraham had not only the promise of a seed, but also of a land for them to inherit. To the Son was promised not only the heathen for his inheritance, but the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession. And to the righteous are continually promised the inheritance of the earth. Moreover, under the law, the first fruits of beasts and the first fruits of the ground were holy, as well as the first fruits of man. Meichisedek, the great type of Christ, presented to Abraham, the great type of the elect church, when returning from the destruction of the kings, bread and wine the fruits of the earth, and received from him tithes of all which he had, in token of homage. And I may add, that Christ in the sacrament of the supper doth the same by all the Gentile church. And while the mystery of the purification and liberation of the creation was thus interwoven in all the Levitical ordinances which foreshowed the redemption of man, it was continually in express words declared by the prophets as about to be coeval with the same. Thus, in the 102nd Psalm, after the “Lord ariseth, and hath mercy on Zion,” and “the heathen do fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth his glory,” it is said that “the earth and the heavens shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed;…but the children of thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before thee.” In like manner, in the 65^th and 66^th chapters of Isaiah, we find new heavens and new earth are created, in which Jerusalem is to be made a glory and her people a praise, and the glory of the Gentiles to flow unto her like a running stream. And when the rod out of the stem of Jesse judgeth the poor with righteousness, and reproveth with equity, for the meek of the earth, we have it added, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” Isa. xi. 6. And again, “ The wilderness, and the solitary place, shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.” Isa. xxxv. 1,2. And in an infinite number of passages is this mystery of the renovation of all things set forth by the prophets of the Lord. And that it is a great object of hope and desire to the saints, Paul doth sufficiently testify, when quoting the kindred prophecy of Haggai he thus applieth it: “And this word, Yet once more, signifleth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.” Heb. xii. 27-29. In the three last words of this text we have the manner of that purification glanced at, which Peter doth enlarge upon in both his epistles, setting forth the deluge to be to the earth what baptism is to man, the assurance of a complete purification by the baptism of fire, of which he giveth the particular account in the third chapter of his second epistle, into which things we need not enter particularly, as they are contained in many parts of this book.

And who that reflecteth for a moment, upon the ends of Christ’s humiliation and sacrifice, will not at once admit that all those things are necessary to be fulfilled to the very letter, in order to defeat the malice of Satan, and display the triumphs of redeeming grace. Whence came these hostilities among the unconscious creatures? or how came they to be possessed with the guile and destructiveness of Satan? Whence came those bowling deserts of which the earth is full, those wastes of thorns and thistles, those poisonous plants and noxious weeds, and that stout rebelliousness of mother earth, always hasting back to rank and unweeded un-profitableness? And whence those cloudy and inclement skies? And whence the forked lightning and smiting thunderbolt, the hurricane, the volcano, and the wild tornado? And whence the breath of the desert wind, the nipping frost, with all the vicissitudes of the harmful seasons? And whence pestilence, which the invisible air doth bear abroad, and noxious damps and exhalations? Are not the elements possessed with Satan’s malice, and the animals, and the dust of the ground, and every thing within the sphere of man’s evil influence? All, all, one fallen system of things, from the invisible and immaterial soul through the regions of animal life and vegetable life, and through the inanimate creation; down to the centre and outward to the utmost verge of the bounds of the earth. All constituting one fallen system, made subject to bondage, not from any will of their own, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope. And as the fall of man’s spirit from the allegiance which he owed to his creator’s word, brought along with it the sense of shameful nakedness, and the degradation of the body to constant toil, the disturbance of the creature’s peace, and the present warfare of elemental nature, with all the evils in which the world is drowned; ought not the recovery of man’s soul to the faith and allegiance of the divine word, which became incarnate, to draw with it the hope of the body’s royal dominion, and of the creature’s dutiful allegiance, the earth’s blessed fruitfulness, and the peace and harmony and innocency and purity of all things? Otherwise the work of redemption were wholly incomplete, if it contained not within itself the assurance of all this; and the name of Second Adam were not proper to Christ, nor that of “the Father of the age to come,” (Everlasting Father) which was given to him when first he was promised of the Virgin’s seed. And further, I see all this pledged and assured to me in the entombing of Christ in the bowels of the rock, which yet was not able to retain him, but yielded him up. Then not only was the dead flesh, but then also was the wall of rock, both of these at the moment of his resurrection when he was quickened in the Spirit, were yielded to his almighty power.

Now this third province of our High Priest’s work I find to be thus written in the Scripture. That at the coming of the Lord there will be such a purification of the earth by fire, and amelioration of its condition by other means, known perhaps to God only, though our author hath well, yea, magnificently speculated thereon, as shall realize the blessedness of that millennial kingdom, whereof some part of the delineation is set down above. This will take place by the casting out of Satan, that prince of the power of the air, and of spiritual wickednesses from their high places, with all the inferior rulers of the darkness of this world; and by the subjugation of all things to the Prince of Peace, and to the saints who shall be raised to be partakers of his government and kingdom. But forasmuch as death, generation and corruption, and growth and decay, shall still have a place in that new earth, (Isa. lxv.) it cannot yet have received its entire purification at the hands of the Great High Priest, but looketh forward still with expectation to the end, when death the last enemy shall be destroyed. But in the mean time the earth, and all the inhabitants of it, shall possess the bright assurance of this future consummation, by the presence of the heavenly Jerusalem, into which nothing entereth that defileth, or maketh a lie, which flesh and blood cannot inherit, which is incorruptible and unchangeable in its beauty, the habitation of the risen saints and elect church of our Priest. This material city, I say, in which the saints shall dwell, and from which they shall go forth on their errands terrestrial or celestial, shall bring to the matter of the earth that same assurance of an unchangeable beauty and perfection yet to be, as the pure body of Christ that, rose to the eternal throne, doth bring at this moment to my body and to the body of the church now living or mouldering in the grave. Oh! I rejoice to meditate on the mysteries of the new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from our God, and abideth in the sight of the earth during the reign of Christ, the city of the great king: what a pledge to the mute earth and to the dwellers upon it that matter also may be constituted without change, and without corruption, and without death! How very beautiful, and pure, and spiritual in that renovated condition Thus, in present peace and brighter hope, shall the earth dwell and endure for the long season of the millennium, and thus shall Christ and his saints reign over it, having their enemies under their feet, but not destroyed.

And meet, very meet it is, there should be such a time of triumph over them, and treading them under, before the time of their utter destruction come. For they have had a long day of triumph over righteousness, and they once triumphed over the body of the righteous one, and do now triumph over the bodies of his church, propagating a generation of vipers, to blaspheme God and honour Satan. All this triumph have they had in the sight of the intelligent heavens, and in the permission of God, albeit his Son was slain in the reality of the divine purpose before the foundation of the world: and now that he has been slain in the manifestation for these eighteen hundred years, they still maintain their dominion over his humbled church, trampling under their feet the most holy blood of the covenant, and doing despite unto the spirit of grace. And for the honour of the Lamb, and for the honour of the children of the Lamb, and for the glory of God’s justice to his own Son, and of his faithfulness to his saints; yea, and for the justification of his great scheme of grace, and for the punishment, the condign punishment of the fell avenger, ought it not, ought it not thus to be, that in this very place where they have triumphed, they should be put under, and held under, kept growling in their chains, gnashing their teeth yet perishing not, while the Priestly king and his saints do bless and govern the earth, judging it with righteousness and equity, and making it to be full of the glory of God, as the waters cover the seas? Then when the fulness of the time shall come for wholly redeeming the earth, and all upon the earth, from the curse of death, and making it to consist in that indefeasible glory with which the city of the saints shineth resplendent, it shall undergo its final purification, and become fit for presentation in the presence of the Father. The evil dust of the wicked shall be taken out from it, and cast into the, lake of fire, so also shall death, and hell the place of separate spirits, and the devil, and “the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” Rev. xxi. 8. Concerning the condition of the earth thereafter, we have no information, if it be not in that word of St. Paul; “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the. Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” 1 Cor. xv. 24-28.

Now concerning the presentation of the kingdom thus purified and subjected unto the Father, I have somewhat to speak more particularly, which affordeth me a proper opportunity of presenting in one point of view the priestly office of Christ, as it is brought out by these views of the kingdom which we maintain. The purity, the inexpressible holiness of God, in whose sight the heavens are not clean, and who chargeth his angels with folly, could not, would not endure the presence of this earth any longer, or of any spirit upon it, after Adam had committed one transgression. So fatal, so unchangeably fatal is the stain of sin, so extensive, so abiding. And from thenceforth until now no fallen spirit hath approached unto the Father, hath known him, neither can approach to him, or know him. Every thing connected with the administration of this world, connected even with its existence, (for it should have been by right in the state of the second death,) hath been conducted under the covert of mediation. It hath been permitted to abide, and we to abide upon it, only by virtue of that great sacrifice of Christ for its redemption, consummated before the world was, and made manifest in these latter times. Every thing of a religious kind instituted by God was prospective of him, and accepted for his righteousness sake. And the rest of the earth not included in the covenant, was imprisoned in hope. Oh! and what a value there must be in that offering which could shield such a world from the consuming wrath of a Holy God! When I think, what a weight of iniquity this round earth is now oppressed with, even now at this dead hour of night, when even wickedness should go to rest, when I think what an outcry of wickedness is ascending into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth; what blasphemy, what riot, what revelry, what oppression, what murder, what sighing of the poor and needy, what ungodly mirth and feasting, what wantonness, what lust, what dishonesty and theft, are now proceeding under the eye of heaven, upon the round of this earth, and when I further think that this hath been, that this ever hath been so; it would stagger me in my faith that there is a Holy God in heaven above, did I not know and believe in the infinite preciousness of that sacrifice, of that most holy sacrifice of Christ, which was offered and accepted from the foundation of the world. And what a thought, that this deluge of sin shall be baled out, that the long long covered hills and valleys of holiness shall again present themselves; that the slimy path of the serpent shall be cleansed out of all nations, and the alloy of hell with fervent heat be burned out of the elements of the solid globe; that the kingdom peopled with the souls and bodies of the redeemed, shall become meet to be presented in the presence of God, shall be given up to the Father as a pure and a holy oblation, and remain for ever the most glorious monument of his almighty power to save ; —this, this is indeed a consummation worthy that the eternal Son of God, should withdraw from the bosom of the Father: and none but he were worthy, as no one but he were able to travail in such a mighty work. I praise God who hath enabled me to comprehend something of the depth of this mystery of sanctification, and God enable me to disclose it a little, that the office of Christ may be magnified.

The word of God took flesh of the Virgin Mary, passive humanity he took, obnoxious to every temptation, and begirt with every sinless infirmity. And that holy thing which was born of her was the seed of the regenerate world. The world’s regeneration and eternal glory lay infolded in the fate of that child which was born in Bethlehem. For if flesh can abide the proof, and come off sinless; then shall all the matter of the world which was formed for flesh, and of which flesh was formed, be also redeemed. And the humanity of Christ, though tried with every extremity which flesh can possibly encounter, though forsaken by God, and left alone to make the perilous stand for a lost world, which God could no longer favour, no, nor favour his own Son, when he put himself within the conditions of the cursed region; that humanity (such was the holiness and mighty power of the Son of God, though in the weakness of flesh) prevailed against all the powers of hell, and was found blameless. But he had to descend into the still lower depth of the grave, and wrestle against Satan in his strongest hold. And there with my Lord the hopes of a world were entombed. Then was the hour and power of darkness; and the earth seemed lost forever. But the Captain of our Salvation arose; the Son of the Virgin Mary arose. And shall he carry flesh into the presence of the ever-holy God? —flesh that had accumulated such a load of guilt since it first came out of his creating hand. Behold, he doth bear flesh into the presence of the Holy Father. And the Father counts not the divinity of his Son dishonoured by flesh, but rather clothed with new honour, and he sits down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Now then there is hope, now the work is begun, and how is it to be completed?

Furthermore, it pleased the wisdom of the Father that the Son of God and Son of man should be withdrawn from the earth for a season, for a little while, till his purposes should proceed; but he permitteth him to bestow a first-fruits of that quickening Spirit which shall yet quicken every living thing upon the earth. He is pleased to bring many sons unto glory by the same path of humility and suffering. He is pleased that the great demonstration of the power of his Son should be showed forth upon sinners while Satan and his angels are possessed of all their strength, and spite, and hatred; and that the Son of: God by virtue of his new power, should beget sons unto God out of the very stones. This is the mystery of the elect church which doth demonstrate the greatness of the victory which Christ had achieved. There will, no doubt, be a terrible strife and struggle when Satan is bound and cast out, but the Son of God shall then be in the field. But while he is absent from the field, and Satan hath it wholly to himself, that a poor and sinful man who seeth him not, who never hath seen him, should be able by the power of his quickening Spirit to prevail; —this is the great triumph over Satan which hath been going on since our Lord ascended up on high. Oh! but I, as one of that church, do feel it to be the greatest proof of the power of God, that I should be thus made conqueror over the devil, the world, and the flesh. And I can have no doubt after what hath passed upon myself, that my Lord’s power should prevail when the time cometh to bind Satan, and to redeem the whole earth.

The elect church is the whole extent to which, for the present, the application of his righteousness is extended; and why no further? because so the order of God’s wisdom willed it. But will it go farther? Yes it will. And how far? To the whole world. When? When so the order of God’s wisdom shall will it. Every one in his order, Christ the first fruits, then they that are Christ’s at his coming, then cometh the end of all, and the presentation of the kingdom, when he shall have put down all authority and rule, &c. And hath any soul, or any body of men, save the Virgin’s Son, had presentation to the Father? I trow not. And hath any of them dared to present a prayer to the Father direct? I trow not. When shall they be presented unto the Father? When their bodies are delivered from the power of the grave, for while there, they are underlying his curse. And when shall that be? At his coming. And then he shall present unto his Father a glorious church, “without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” And then another stage of the redemption is complete, the presenting of the church unto the Father; at which time shall take place those holy espousals of the second Adam to the second Eve, who was taken out of his bleeding side: when I may say, they are also in the mystery, commanded to multiply and replenish the earth; for then will the multitude of children begin to be born unto Christ. And now endeth the mystery of election which then hath its accomplishment, “accomplish the number of the elect and hasten thy kingdom.” And now the hastings of unfaithful Arminianism (“he that believeth doth not make haste.”) the blinding hopes of our present Millenarians (but their proper name is Optimists) will begin to be harmless, which now are ruinous; for as yet their time is not come. The dispensation of election is ended; and the dispensation of universality is begun. And then I will myself become a Wesleyan Methodist, and preach Christ the Saviour of all. And then I will proclaim the merit of his blood, and the benefits of his death to all. For why to all? Because so the order of the wisdom of the dispensation will have it. But is the Father dwelling amongst them yet? I trow not; he cannot dwell where death is. In the new Jerusalem indeed, because there is nothing to offend, will the Father dwell. “In that day ye shall know that the Father is in me, and I in him.” And do the sojourners on the earth present their prayers directly to the Father? I trow not; not without a Mediator; for the subjects of death are still under the curse, and cannot at the same time be under the favour of God.

There must therefore be a third stage, when after all the sojourners have paid the forfeit of death, and death himself hath paid the forfeit of the second death, and the wicked dust of the wicked hath been cast out; and all opposing will hath been expelled from the earth; and the righteous have been separated in the last judgment; and the kingdom completely purified; then, but not till then, may the High Priest present the kingdom unto God even the Father as a pure offering, the end of all offerings, the purchase of the offering of himself. With respect to the condition of the earth thereafter, it is not my part to discourse, and my author hath discoursed most worthily thereon. But so much I have thought it good to set forth, that all men may know whether our doctrines concerning the second advent and the kingdom of our Lord, do or do not, give more worthy views of his priestly office, than those which are commonly held.

How the two Systems bear upon the KINGLY office of CHRIST.

THESE three offices of Prophet, Priest, and King, under which the work of our Redeemer is contemplated in the Holy Scriptures, and by all orthodox divines, have respect, not to his essential divinity as Son in the bosom of the Father from all eternity, nor yet to his first procession as the creator of all things, but to his second procession as Mediator between God and his sinful creatures. They respect him not as the eternal Son of God, but as the Son of man; not as the Word, but as the Word made flesh; and are descriptive of the perfect completeness of the man, taken into eternal union with the second person of the Godhead. It is not therefore, an arbitrary division of divines, but the essential form of perfect humanity, as it first came from the hands of its Creator, and as it became in the person of the Redeemer, and shall become hereafter in the person of all the redeemed. And it is no speculation of the divines, but a great fundamental truth of theology, that the first man Adam was created a prophet, a priest, and a king: —a prophet, in the knowledge and foresight of all the properties of the creation into which he had been introduced as head; wherefore God brought all the creatures to him to be named, according to their qualities: —a priest, in all that pertained to the worship of his Creator: —and a king over the animal, the vegetable, and the elemental kingdoms, whereof he was constituted the lord. To the knowledge of good and evil he was indeed a stranger, perceiving only the good of every thing, for every creature of God is good in its constitution, and the distinction of evil was introduced only by the fall. This same constitution I can perceive even in the fallen children of Adam, though broken and powerless, yet ever endeavouring to recover itself. All science I hold to be but an attempt at prophecy, to know the result or outcome of certain combinations of matter or proceedings of man. The only perfect science is astronomy, and its perfection consisteth in this, that there is no appearance in the heavens which it cannot account for according to a law, and predict according to the set and appointed period of its law. Indeed what are the laws of nature, after which they seek, but those ordinances of the Creator to his several creatures, which Adam demonstrated himself to be possessed of by prophetic intuition, when he gave to every creature its proper name? So that all science is but the groping after that knowledge and power, which the body of Adam possessed by intuition and instinct, in virtue of that sovereignty which God gave it, over every thing that he had created and made. This hunting after the knowledge of natural science and political economy, I hold to be nothing else than the instinct of man putting forth its prophetic gift within its bounded sphere, moving over the ruins of his great ness, and putting forth desperate but ineffectual struggles to recover the first and lowest of his birthrights.

In like manner, I do perceive man struggling hard in his present thraldom, to repossess himself of his office of a priest, which properly pertaineth to the conscience and concerneth itself with righteousness. Justice, which it is the first object of men in some way or other to establish among themselves, is an essential part of religion; and testifies this her high relationship in her continual appeals unto God by the sanction of an oath: morality also, which is the inward form of justice, holdeth of the same high original: as also do the gropings of the spirit after God, if haply she might find him, with all the traditions of a primitive religion, institutions of temples, sacrifices, and religious rites. Man is every where characterized by something of this kind, which is a continual effort to regain the primeval dignity of the priest. And I may say that the superstitions of all ages and tribes of men bring to me the same evidence of the priestly office being still remembered and sought by him, which the erroneous systems of knowledge do bring of his appetite and desire after the prophetic office. A nation of atheists would be to me as great a wonder as a nation of idiots.

And surely every one hath the desire of power implanted in his constitution, and doth ever exercise it, alas I with how much hunger, and thirst, and hasty indiscretion! My own, is the dearest word of all languages, and one chief end of all restraints and punishments is to prevent it from being the only word. This noble instinct of power testifies the king, as the former instincts of knowledge and righteousness do testify the prophet and the priest in man. And it is the highest and noblest of all the three, to which the other two serve but as guides and stewards. For no sooner hath man discovered any piece of knowledge, than he straightway proceedeth to achieve a point of mastery and power. And no sooner doth he attain an office of righteousness, than his spirit riseth into a new degree of dignity, undervaluing in conscience the multitudes who have not yet effected their escape from the bondage of the sin. The great philosopher’s aphorism, that “knowledge is power,” and the poet’s much-applauded sentiment, that “an honest man’s the noblest work of God,” express what I mean by the inward and the outward advancement in power and dignity, which are given by knowledge and by righteousness; or the subserviency of the prophetical and priestly to the regal office in the nature of man.

Now the redemption of man from the threefold degradation of ignorance, unrighteousness, and oppression, and the establishment of knowledge, righteousness, and liberty over all the earth, is the end which the Son of God proposed to accomplish by the second perilous procession from the bosom of his Father’s love. He purposed to restore man to his primitive birthright, and the world to its primeval blessedness. I say not that this is all, but do rather believe that it is but a very small part of all which shall come out of this great demonstration of the divine love, to his own infinite glory and to the wonderful exaltation of man for ever and ever. It is, however, distinctly contained in the mediatorial undertaking, and completely accomplished when the kingdom is given up to the Father. But what may be the condition of humanity thereafter, taken as it hath been into eternal union with the divinity, and what the office of those kingly priests and prophetic spirits through eternity, and what the destiny of this glorious earth, I know not, neither stay I here to speculate; choosing at present to confine myself to the accomplishment and consummation of the mediatorial dispensation.

When the Son of God had proceeded forth upon this errand of mercy, and began to put forth the presentiments and precursors of his coming to the earth, we find him investing his chosen ones with prophetic, priestly, and royal dignity combined in one. Such was Noah, when he offered sacrifice unto God, and divided the earth to his three sons, foretelling also their various destiny. Such was Abraham, a prophet, a priest to offer his own son, and greater than a king. Such was Melchisedek, a priest, and a king, and he was a prophet, also by the very act of bringing out bread and wine, with which to give the patriarch possession of the land that had been promised to him. And the prophet Moses was a king in Jeshurun, and the institutor of his brother Aaron in the priestly office. But from this time forward the offices were divided by the levitical institution, which was meant to be only for a time. Yet the Lord promised to make the whole people a nation of kings and priests, and likewise prophets, that they should all, from the least to the greatest, know him, see visions and dream dreams. And when he came in person, he came in the fulness of all the three offices in which he bad been foretold, the prophet like unto Moses, the priest after the order of Melchisedek, to make an end of sin, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, the king, of David’s loins, to sit upon the holy hill of Zion, and to have the heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession.

But, though born to the plenitude of all these offices, and, as such, announced in the angelic messages to Zacharias, to the blessed Virgin, and by the revelations of prophecy to Zacharias, to Simeon, and to the Baptist; as such, saluted and worshipped by the shepherds and the wise men; and as such persecuted by wicked powers; he did not at once act in them all, but with a due order, according to the signification of the divine counsel, and, doubtless, according to the perfection of the divine wisdom. He laboured, first, as the Prophet, and instructed his church in all things which were written in Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms, adding thereto whatever to the fulness of his wisdom it seemed good to add. By his death, by the offering of his own body as the sacrifice upon the accursed tree, he prepared the way for his entering into the office of High Priest, but did not enter into it yet, having some important work, into which we inquire not, to discharge in the separate state of his soul: nor did he enter into it when he had fulfilled that mysterious ministry, but still abode after his resurrection for forty days, perfecting the prophetic work which the unbelief of his disciples had prevented from being completed before. Yet, by breathing upon them the Holy Spirit, he showed that he was already in possession of the holy office of the Priestly King; even as, during his whole life time, he showed the same, in his forgiving sin, and exercising all kingly power over the creatures and the elements of nature. Still, as in the type, no one did enter into the fulness of the High Priest’s office, or clothe himself with his priestly, regal vestments, till he had presented the blood of the sacrifice in the Holy of Holies before the face of God; so, St. Paul reasoneth, Christ did not enter into his office of our High Priest, until he had passed within the veil of the heavens, to appear in the presence of God for us. And even yet, I may say, he is not the vested and manifest Priest, because he hath not yet come forth from within the veil, but is there still making atonement for the sins of the nation, the chosen nation, the royal priesthood, and the chosen generation of the elect church, whose number is not yet completed: and I may say, also, for the sins of the Jewish nation, who, while the High Priest was absent from their sight within the veil, making the yearly atonement, were wont to be filled with lamentations, and supplication, and mournful cries unto God, that he would accept it, and wash away the nation’s sins. Even so hath that nation been kept in an agony of doleful suffering, during all the disappearance of their High Priest; nor will hold their joyful jubilee, the feast of tabernacles, until he come forth again from within the veil of the heavens, which he will yet do without sin, unto salvation to all those who are waiting and looking, looking and waiting for his appearance.

Meanwhile, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, which he sendeth forth to those without the veil who believe on him, he is sealing as many as his Father willeth to give unto him; and proving to the world by their means, that his offering of righteousness hath been accepted, — that his is the only acceptable righteousness, by the acceptance of which it is the will of the Father that men should be saved, and by the rejection of which it is the will of the Father that they should be condemned against the day of his appearing. And we, who have received the first fruits of the Spirit, have a foretaste of the prophetic, and priestly, and kingly offices, — are said to know all things by this holy unction, and are called a royal priest hood, to show forth the honour (the virtues, or powers) of him “who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light,” “kings and priests unto our God,” and we shall reign with him on the earth. But we are so, only in part, according to the measure of the Spirit and according to the measure of faith unto every one. The office of the church is prophetic, inasmuch as it is given unto her by the Spirit, to understand and explain the prophetic word of God and show the fulfilment of his purposes in the work of providence. This, I say, is the office, not of the priesthood, or rather it should be called, not of the ministry only, but of the church; the ministry being for the church, as the church is for the world, appointed to witness the truth of Christ’s prophetic word, of Christ’s priestly righteousness imputed unto us, of Christ’s royal promise about to be revealed in us. And it is the next office of the church to intercede as a priest for the world before the mercy-seat of Christ, by her prayers and by her sufferings, and by her labours, and by her agonies of soul; a duty little thought of now, when it is the most fearfully needed. And the church fulfilleth the office of king also in the same spiritual sense in which Christ presently fulfilleth it; that is, by dispensations of forgiveness and exconimunication, of binding and of loosing. For, though she may little think of this her high prerogative, and leave it in the hands of the Papists to be made a profane idolatry of, it was part of the church’s investiture from the mouth of her Lord, before he left the earth. And, I believe, to this day, that all his dispensations to the earth, of good and of ill, are made in consideration of the church, and in answer to the prayers which his Holy Spirit moveth in the breast of his church.

But though in this spiritual way the church doth shadow forth all these three offices, yet, in none of them is she completely invested. She doth but see as through a glass dimly; she hath forgotten that she was purged from her old sins; and she exerciseth no kingly discipline over her members, but is under bondage to every low and crafty influence. She hath been so from the first, and will be so unto the last, growing worse and worse, until utterly wearied out, and casting away all hope of her amendment, her King shall come and judge her. Yet, all sunk and degraded as the church of Christ hath become; she is the only visible Prophet, Priest, and King of the earth. For if that be the Prophet of the earth, which rebukes it of’ its sin, and teaches it of righteousness and warneth it of judgment to come, then is the Christian Church that Prophet; for she only hath any knowledge, or giveth forth any lessons of these divine things; —science being apostate, and philosophy vain, and all the world besides lost in the pitchy darkness of idolatry. And if that be the Priest of the earth, whose offerings of prayer, and praise, and thanksgiving, and holiness, and painful intercession, fasting, weeping, and lamentation, do restrain the anger of the Lord from bursting forth upon the horrid wickedness with which the earth is full, then is the Christian Church that Priest; for she alone hath any humanity or mortification of spirit, or acknowledgment of God’s mercies, or fear of his judgments. And if that be the King of the earth, who from his ample storehouse serveth out to the needy nations the gifts of God’s almighty goodness, and for whose worthy petitions the Lord sendeth rain, or withholdeth it, dispenseth the heat of the sun in genial supplies, or now with scorching heat, and now with cold and cloudy faintness, for whom also he overthroweth kings and setteth them up, and bindeth princes in fetters of iron, or enlargeth them to wider conquest and dominion, blesseth the cottage with plenty and contentment, or, as now, sendeth every where niggard famine, and puny, miserable wretchedness; then such a royal Mother is the Church; for surely it is for the sake of the elect Church, to cherish her, or to avenge her, to chastise her, or to gratify her, to vex her, or to bless her, according to the order of a right-holy and all-wise discipline, that the Lord bringeth these vicissitudes, and alterations, and changes upon the face of all the earth.

From these premises it clearly appeareth, that the work of human redemption, whether regarded in its types, or in the person of the Redeemer, or in the operation of the Spirit upon the church, aimeth at and tendeth to the reproduction in human nature of that threefold dignity of prophet, priest, and king, in which it was created all entire at the first; and which it ever ineffectually attempteth to recover for itself. That this however is still but an aim or a tendency, and hath not yet been realized upon the earth, will appear no less manifestly from the slightest observation and reflection. We are yet in the state of the embryo, having the rudiments of that perfection, and hasting to the birth. Even Christ, while he was seen, did only show these offices in the mystery, or at most in the humiliation; not in the manifestation and the glory. A prophet indeed he was, and greater than a prophet; but hidden by surrounding darkness, and waiting still for the manifestation of his fulness: a priest also and a king, but holier than any priest, and more powerful than any king; yet withheld and restrained by the sufferings and afflictions which be must first undergo. The promise of them there and then was demonstrative of their true existence; waiting for their glorious and powerful manifestation, until the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power should be fulfilled. And so also it is with his church, which deriveth from his Spirit no more power than is sufficient to follow his foot steps: prophesying in part, and in part fulfilling both the office of kings and priests, but only in part. The Holy Spirit given at Pentecost doth set us in the way of our Lord’s suffering, and enable us to be conformed to his death; but He doth no more. And behold how exactly it is so fulfilled in her experience. For though the church fulfilleth to the world by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, from the hands of our priestly King now within the veil, the offices which have been mentioned above; the world doth requite her only with contempt, and persecution, and death, even as it requited Christ himself during the days of his flesh. And according to the activity, and purity, and plenty of these her gracious ministries, the world is but stirred up to entreat her the more cruelly; insomuch that the church for her own ease and safety is continually tempted to fatal accommodations. From which arrayed opposition it clearly appeareth, that not Christ, but Satan the enemy of Christ still ruleth over the powers of this world, whose kingdoms are not yet become the kingdoms of our Lord. In no sense can Christ therefore be said to have been invested with the kingdoms of this world, otherwise he would not surely trouble and afflict his own church which be hath purchased with his own blood. The times and seasons which were to elapse before the kingdom should be restored to Israel, the times of the Gentiles during which Jerusalem was to be trodden under foot, have not yet run their appointed course. Our Priest is still detained in expectation, at the right hand of his Father, and waiting while the Lord hideth his face from the house of Jacob. Giving all weight to the kingly style with which he was born, and with which the superscription was written over his cross, and to the present kingly office of his church, as I have stated it above, I cannot see how with any propriety he can be said, either during, or since the days of his flesh, to exercise the office of a King, save in that initial and partial sense which hath been already explained. The office and function of a King is that of exaltation, but Christ’s life, and the life of his church, are of the lowest humiliation. No one is greater than a king in that dominion over which he ruleth; and yet Christ was lower than all. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” smitten, stricken, and afflicted. He was not in the form of a king, but in the form of a servant. He was the heir of the throne, and making his way to it by the cross, but he was not crowned, he was not enthroned, he had not assumed the power. Satan in his hearing said, These the kingdoms of the earth, and all the glory of them, are mine; and Christ did not challenge the usurpation; if indeed it may be called usurpation, for Satan had achieved them by his potent subtlety. He held them in virtue of the curse of God: and he must hold them till that curse can be removed consistently with the holiness of God. Immediately before Christ was taken up, he was asked if he would then restore the kingdom to Israel, by which it was manifest that he had not yet fulfilled that great object of his mission. Paul bears his testimony to the same truth, that the rule and government of the world are still in the hands of Satan, in these words, “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:” Eph. ii. 2. And the Apocalypse, in chap. xx, declareth that it shall continue so until the beast and the false prophet, that is, the personal Antichrist and the papal power, with all that follow them shall have been destroyed in the battle of Armageddon. And this we do not yet perceive, for the personal Antichrist is not yet made manifest, and the false prophet still sitteth as God in the temple of God. On every ground, therefore, I hold it to be a contradiction of all language, and a confounding of all distinctions, to say that Christ hath begun to exercise his office of a King. With as much propriety might he have been said to exercise the office of a Priest during the days of his flesh, while he forgave sins, which the apostle in the Hebrews testifieth that he did not. His being so in the mystery, is a very different thing from his being so in the manifestation. In the mystery he was Prophet, Priest, and King, from all eternity. But in the manifestation he became not a Prophet until the days of his flesh; albeit it was he and no other who spoke in all the prophets; and he became not a Priest until he ascended up on high, to present his wounded and slain body in the Holy presence. And he shall be King in the manifestation, when he cometh forth in his robes of state, or in his glorified body, to destroy his enemies and take possession of the earth. Accordingly you do not find him crowned in the vision of his person made to the apostle John in the first chapter of the Apocalypse, nor in that given in the fourth and fifth; but in that of the eleventh when he comes forth to take possession of the kingdom.

These views will become more apparent if we take into consideration one of the most famous prophecies which respect the person of Christ; that of Emmanuel, contained in the seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters of Isaiah. I prefer this prophecy to any other, because it is by peculiar preference the prophecy of the incarnation: and when the announcement of the incarnation was given to the blessed Virgin, it was given in the very words with which this prophecy is summed up and concluded. It is moreover distinguished from every other prophecy, by giving to the Virgin’s child not only the name Emmanuel, expressive of his divinity abiding amongst men, but also that descriptive or titular name, which contains in it the progression and fulness of his dignity and office. And from which will appear not only the completeness, but the unfolding of the completeness of his person. Though the substance of the personal prophecy be in the 6^th and 7^th verses of the ninth chapter, it will be necessary that I run hastily over the two preceding chapters, which are all concerning Emmanuel, the Son of the Virgin.

The Lord had promised and sworn unto David, that of the fruit of his body, a king should sit upon his throne for ever; and so it had continued to be exactly accomplished till the days of Ahaz, when the revolted and insurrectionary kingdom of Israel, and the kingdom of Syria, confederated against the word of the Lord, “to set up a king in the midst of Jerusalem even the son of Tabeal.” Wherefore “the heart of the house of David, and the heart of his people being moved as the trees of the wood are moved with the wind,” the Lord revealed for his consolation at this juncture the famous prophecy of Emmanuel, and sent forth Isaiah to declare it unto the king for his consolation and assurance: “Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” and to connect this child with deliverance, and give a sure sign of the distant event, he adds, that before Shear-jashub, the child whom he had in his hand, should know to avoid the evil, and choose the good, the land which he feared should be forsaken of both her kings. And then he describeth the calamities which the Assyrians and Egyptians should inflict upon Judah. This first revelation of Emmanuel is very enigmatical, but to one versed in the prophetic style would easily convey that his birth was to be the great sign of the deliverance of Judah out of the hands of her enemies; yet not till after a very fearful desolation of their land. But the prophecy of the eighth chapter, “He shall pass through Judah, he shall over flow and go over; he shall reach even to the neck: and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel,” Isa. viii. 8; shows us Emmanuel as a King, the child born of the Virgin as the king of the land, which the Assyrians should overflow, even to the neck. The two verses which follow, “Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us; (Or, for Immanuel);” Isa. viii. 9, 10; carry our views forward to a great confederacy of all nations, which should be broken by this same child which was to be born of the Virgin. Then the prophet presenteth him as the sanctuary of those that trust in him, but as a snare to both the houses of Israel, “Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence, to both the houses of Israel; for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken.” Isa. viii. 13-15. After this calamity, of which, though intended for a deliverer, he is to be the occasion, this wonderful prophecy represents a season of separation to his disciples, “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” Isa. viii. 16; which is, as I take it, descriptive of our exact condition since his rejection of the houses of Israel; —a separate people, in whom is bound and sealed up the testimony and witness of Jesus. During this while, Messiah represents himself as waiting upon the Lord till the end of that calamity, “And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him. Behold, I, and the children whom the Lord hath given me, are for signs and for wonders in Israel, from the Lord of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion.” Isa. viii. 17, 18. Then he instructeth them in the cause of that fearful darkness which was to overwhelm them, and the only safeguard against it, “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter; should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony:” Isa. viii. 19, 20. Then comes the description of the desolate condition and maddened misery of those who had rejected this counsel, “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them (literally “that no morning to them,” i.e. say, that there shall be no morning to them). And they shall pass through it (the darkness) hardly bestead and hungry: and it shall come to pass, that, when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves, and curse their king and their God, and look upward. And they shall look upon the earth; and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish; and they shall be driven to darkness. Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation;” or, (as the Vulgate and Mede render this first part of the ninth chapter, which they connect with the preceding description, of the darkness) “and to cleaving darkness, and from their straits they shall not be able to escape.” Isa. viii. 20-22; and ix. 1.

When these the fatal effects of rejecting his person, and his testimony, and his law, ministered by the Holy Spirit through the apostles, have been fully declared, this wonderful prophesy proceedeth to open the dawning of the light upon that long and wintry night. And the prophet perceiveth it breaking upon the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, in recompense, as it were, for the darkness of conquest and captivity, which first set in upon that side of the land in the time of Hoshea, king of Israel. And here I must follow the Vulgate and Joseph Mede, in translating the latter part of verse 1, as I did in translating the former part; for in our version it is utterly unintelligible, and mars one of the most beautiful and perfect prophecies in scripture “In the first time the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali were undervalued, but in the last time shall the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations be honoured; the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.” Isa. ix. 2. Whether this was wholly accomplished in his first coming, to which it is applied in the gospel by Matthew, I leave every one to judge for himself; but to me it seems manifest that it was not, both because they profited little by the light then afforded to them, which can therefore hardly be said to have much exalted or recompensed them, but rather, as our Lord argues, aggravated their condemnation. But inasmuch as it points to the place where the great light was to burst forth, there can be no doubt, that it is a very remarkable prophecy, though, in respect to the complete fulfilment, I have my suspicion that it remains yet to be shown, against that time when the light of the Gentiles shall begin to become the glory of his people Israel, and “the Sun of righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings,” Mal. iv. 2. On this subject, however, I do no more than express my own conviction, while I feel assured that no one can doubt that of what immediately follows no part hath been fulfilled: and now we must begin to be more minute.

“Thou hast multiplied the nation.” That this is a characteristic feature of the restoration of the Jewish people at the future advent of Messiah, is manifest from almost all scripture which hath reference thereto; as from Isa. xxvi. 15. “Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, thou hast increased the nation: thou art glorified: thou hadst removed it far unto all the ends of the earth.” From Isa. xxvii. “He shall cause them that come of Jacob to take root: Israel shall blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit.” From Isa. xlix. 19,20. “For thy waste and thy desolate places, and the land of thy destruction, shall even now be too narrow by reason of the inhabitants, and they that swallowed thee up shall be far away. The children which thou shalt have, after thou hast lost the other, shalt say again in thine ears, The place is too strait for me: give place to me that I may dwell.” Next comes the joy of Messiah and the nation, at the breaking of their bondage and the destruction of all their oppressors, “And to him (margin) increased the joy: they joy before thee according to the joy in harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.” Isa. ix. 3, 4. Then comes the manner of this great overthrow of the enemies of Messiah and his people, so extraordinary and so extraordinarily typified in the destruction of the host of Midian, by the sound of the trumpets and by the fire of the lamps of Gideon, with his three hundred chosen men. It is needless to add that fire is a constant instrument of this destruction in all the scriptures. “For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood; but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.” Isa. ix. 5. And to crown all, we have all these glorious events referred back to the birth of that child, with whose announcement the prophecy began; whereby the whole, from vii. 14. to ix. 7. is as it were clasped together, and presented to us as the achievements of this child, who was promised to king Ahaz in that desperate strait. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The ever lasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Isa. ix. 6, 7.

From these two last verses, which are worthy the elucidation of many volumes, I shall deduce the progression and fulness of Christ’s regal office, which includeth and draweth up into itself both the prophetic and the priestly. The office of the child is government, “the government shall be upon his shoulder.” What government this was to be is explained after his name, “of the increase of his government and dominion there shall be no end;” that it shall include all bounds, at least all the bounds of the earth, and fill all time, that is, be eternal, according to what is foretold in Daniel vii. 13, 14. “I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.”

But our prophecy is more particular than that famous prophecy of Daniel, adding the royal seat and metropolis of this universal and eternal empire. “Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Isa. ix. 7. This is the last and also the main part of the prophecy, which, be it always remembered, was given as an assurance to the wavering heart of the house of David; and to that end doth declare and signify that this vast dominion was to acknowledge the throne of David, and him that sat thereon, to acknowledge the supremacy of the house of Jacob, and him that ruled over the same. Which ought to have been consolation and sustenance to the wicked king in his present strait and agitation, for it was more than had been ever declared by the mouth of prophet or of seer. And so important did the Lord esteem it, and for such instant use did he intend it, that he confirmed it by two great signs; the one that Syria and Samaria should be divested of both their kings, before the elder of Isaiah’s sons should know to refuse the evil and choose the good: the other that the rulers of Damascus and the spoil of Syria should be carried away by the king of Assyria, before the younger of his sons could say, My father and my mother. A prophecy which was thus sealed with two of the greatest events of those days might well claim the belief of the wicked king, and retain the belief of all posterity. It appears therefore from this great prophecy of the incarnation, that the idea which, was given of the Man-God, or Emmanuel, was that of a deliverer and rightful inheritor of the land, the destroyer of all its oppressors, the remover of all its bondage, the multiplier of the nation, the increaser of its joy, the occupant of its throne, and the governor of its people for ever, yea, and the monarch of an universal and eternal dominion upon the earth. These predictions concerning the Child are in this prophecy, and no others are in it. If it mean not this it meaneth nothing. If a child was ever born of a virgin it was for these ends he was born. And if he have not fulfilled these ends, then he is yet to fulfil them, nor would such a delay weaken but rather confirm the prophecy; for there is mentioned a mysterious waiting on his part, and rejection of him on their part, and a woful visitation of darkness in consequence thereof. And accordingly they are so found till this day, rejecting his aid in miserable woful darkness, nothing of all the glory having been accomplished, but the very reverse; because the season of his waiting is not yet expired. The prophecy therefore waits still for its great accomplishment in the Son of the Virgin, by the act and power of the Son of the Virgin. If any one say, No; Jesus of Nazareth shall never sit upon David’s throne, nor rule over the house of Jacob. Then I say, Jesus of Nazareth is not the person here prophesied of, but some other. If they say, Yea, but he is the Emmanuel born of the Virgin, who now is spiritually filling the spiritual throne of David, and spiritually reigning over the spiritual house of Jacob, and spiritually holding universal spiritual empire. Then all I have to say is, I do not know what the spiritual throne of David means. It is the throne of a believer’s heart. Where learned you to call a believer’s heart the throne of David? It is the throne of the Majesty on high. How dare you blaspheme, and call the throne of God the throne of David? And what use was there to tell Ahaz in his present straits that a Son should be born and a Child given, who should reign in the hearts of men, and be exalted to the throne of God? And what signs of such an event were those two which were granted? Besides these spiritualists know not where they lead themselves. If they will have all the substance of Emmanuel’s work to be invisible and spiritual, then I will have his birth also to be spiritual and invisible upon the earth. If they will annihilate the greater part to please themselves, I will annihilate the lesser part to vex them. And then what have they left of all this bright and glorious prophecy but the shadow of a dream. But forsaking such quibbles, I desire to pursue my exposition of this prophecy by a short meditation of the manifold name which is given to this Child.

This name of the Child, which was to be born of the Virgin and given unto the Jewish nation, is “Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of peace;” not five names, but one name comprehensive of the being and office of Emmanuel; of which the first characteristic, the Wonderful, referreth to the miraculous nature of all his works and ways. Beginning with his conception, and ending with the accomplishment and presentation of the mediatorial kingdom; yea, and going back to the announcements which were made of him from the days of old, what do we find but that it is all out of, above, and against the course of nature, and intended to deliver man from the present thraldorn of the natural life into the freedom of the life spiritual and divine? In the ancient times, when he delivered the church from Egyptian bondage, they sung him “Wonderful in his praises.” When he appeared to Manoah, he did wonderfully, and prayed them not to ask his name, for it was wonderful; and so was his conception, and his birth, and his life, and his resurrection, and his ascension, and his gift of the Spirit from his present unseen abode; which yet are all but a prelude and faint signification of that wonderfulness with which he shall show himself the second time unto the world, and avenge his elect, and deliver his own people with a mighty hand and an out-stretched arm, and plant them in their own land, and rule the world in peace and righteousness. The wonders of this second appearance shall so utterly transcend all that hath been seen heretofore of the working of this wonderful one, that it is said by Jeremiah, “Therefore, behold the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say, the Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. But, the Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land.” Jer. xiii. 7, 8. The law of the natural man and of the natural course of things being opposed to the law of the Spirit of God, and that being wonderful or miraculous which opposeth the former, and establisheth the latter, every act of Christ in his progress to the redemption of the world must necessarily be supernatural, and that of all others the most so which consisteth in the casting out of Satan from his usurped dominion, and the restoring of the earth to the government of righteousness. This I judge to be the import of Wonderful, the first letter or syllable, if I may so speak, in the Lord’s name.

For the second, Counsellor, I regard it as expressing and being the fittest word to express his prophetic office in all its amplitude, whether as exercised before his coming in his servants the prophets, or by himself in the days of his flesh, or by the Holy Spirit since his ascension into glory. And its second place in the great name teacheth that his wonderful and mighty workings are all accompanied with and done on purpose to sustain, righteous and holy counsels; that he is the Saviour of the earth by that which he shall teach them. It pointeth moreover to the ordinance of preaching by which it hath pleased God to save them that believe. The power of this word, however, is not yet completely told, but hath, I make no doubt, a chief reference to that future coming in power, and glory, that reign, and righteousness, of which it is thus written in the prophet, “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.” Isa. xi. 1, 2. And not only shall these attributes of the prophet shine resplendent in him on that day, but also in all his people, concerning whom it is prophesied, “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jer. xxxi. 34. And to the same effect by Paul it is said, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then I shall know even as also I am known.” 1 Cor. xiii. 12. It is the redemption of the mind of man, and the completion of his knowledge to which this part of the Redeemer’s office, this letter in his name hath respect. Even as the former hath respect to that command over nature, and sweet subordination of it to the law of the Spirit and the will of God, which shall be afforded to every one who shall in that day be found in his likeness. The one redemption from the tyranny of nature, the other redemption from the darkness of ignorance.

The next letter in this name, “El-gebor the mighty God,” consisteth of two parts, the one essentially divine, the other essentially human; being according to the original, “God mighty,” the word mighty being commonly used of a hero or mighty conqueror, as we would say “God the heroic one.” Its first half hath reference, no doubt, to his name Emmanuel, which also hath in it the same name of God, with the addition of his local habitation with us; while its second half hath reference to those heroic acts and achievements of war for Israel’s redemption, which had just been predicted of him in the preceding verses. In this prophet we have the same combination of words in the 21^st verse of the tenth chapter, and used in like manner of his great and powerful demonstration in behalf of Israel, when, as I judge, he shall begin to be their Emmanuel. “The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God,” El-gebor. Isa. x. 21. Where by perusing the context it will be perceived that it is introduced in the train and sequel of that great exploit with which he shall reveal himself to his people, by breaking the Assyrian upon the mountains, This gives him a right to the title of, Gebor, the mighty one. And this mightiness maketh the people “to take hold upon his strength, and to make peace with him, and they shall make peace with him.” It is by the same title of Gebor, the mighty one, that he is described in the forty-fifth Psalm as coming to conquer the love of his Spouse, and to marry her forever. And there also he introduceth himself to her by great exploits of war and conquest, wrought on her behalf. Now whatever may be said of the two former letters of his name, I do say of this one, God the heroic one, that it hath not been accomplished, and that it is yet future: for as the man of war, the Virgin’s Son, hath not revealed himself; as the Lord of hosts accomplishing whatever was foreshown in a figure by the victories of his people Israel, when he marched at their head in the pillar of fire, the Son of Mary hath not yet appeared. We wait for him in this character, and he waiteth until the time shall come, when as it is written in all the prophets, he shall awake and come in his strength, and accomplish that of which old things were but the emblem and prelude, as it is written a hundred times in this prophet. “Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep, that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over? Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall, obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” Isa. ii. 9-11 Then his people shall call him not only, Emmanuel God, with us, but El-gebor, God the mighty one.

The next letter, in this comprehensive name, is, “the everlasting Father,” or as it is, being truly rendered, “the Father of eternity, or of the eternal age.” Time by the Jews was divided into two great portions, the age that is, and the age that is to come; meaning by the former the duration of their captivity, affliction, and waiting for Messiah; and by the latter, the eternity of their triumph and rejoicing, and kingdom, in the presence of Messiah. The eternal age of which the child is here called the Father, is the latter of these two, according to the word of St. Paul, “For unto the angels hath be not put in subjection the world (age) to come; whereof we speak.” Heb. ii. 5. The character of that age is thus described by the Lord, “And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world (age) marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world (age), and the resurrection front the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection;” Luke xx. 34-36. which is spoken, not of the sojourners who shall then be upon the earth, but of the raised, in answer to the question of the Sadducees, concerning those of this present age who shall be thought worthy of the resurrection, and the eternal life of that age to come. For it was a universal opinion among the Jews, that at the commencement of the future age the dead should be raised who had lived and died in the fear of God, and in the hope of Messiah: who, they believed, would not disappoint their faithful expectations, but bring them along with him. Of this age it is here said that he is to be the Father, even as Satan is the father of this age, and all save those begotten unto Christ are his children. “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” “According to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” This the third syllable of Emmanuel’s name conveyeth to my ear the sweet and blessed intelligence, that when in his character of the mighty God, he shall have cast out all his and our enemies, and the chief of them, that piercing serpent, as is set forth in due order in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of the Apocalypse, he will rule the earth as a father doth his children, in righteousness and peace, and they will obey him as children in all love and obedience. His power, his counsel his divine might shall pervade every thing and make it blessed even as Satan’s power and counsel, and devilish might do now pervade every thing and make it cursed. In which age to come there shall be a first period, during which his enemies are under his feet, trampled upon but not destroyed, imprisoned but not executed, in order that his royal clemency may be displayed; and a latter period during which they are utterly cast out and overwhelmed with the passive horrors, and inactivity of the second death. The child shall be with them all the while the Father of the age, for his name is Emmanuel God with us. He is not now with us, but absent “for a little while,” and therefore the age is still under Satan’s fatherhood; but he shall be with us again, and for eternity, then shall be acknowledged as the Father of all the earth. And we who are now begotten to him by the Spirit are his children, the first fruits, the honoured heirs of his sufferings, that we may also become the heirs of his glory. Finally, He is the Prince of Peace.

This is the last syllable of his name, and ariseth to the highest pitch of honour and dignity. It addeth the awful attribute of sovereignty; the singular majesty of royal power, to the wonderfulness of working, the wisdom of counsel, the almightiness of power, the graciousness and propriety of Father. It invests him with the sovereignty of the world, and crowns him Lord of all; and by adding thereto the epithet, ‘of Peace,’ it takes out of sovereignty those attributes for which it is dreaded; and invests it with those for which it is constituted and upheld of God as most necessary to human well-being. And as the final consummation of every scheme is that for which it is undertaken, and towards which it struggles through every impediment, this last characteristic of Emmanuel to become the Prince of Peace doth show us, that the great end and purpose for which he became incarnate of the virgin, and hath travailed in such humility, and is to come again in such fearful and terrible acts of war and destruction upon all the earth, is to bring about peace, against which Satan is so determined, and the devilish nature of wicked men so determined, that before it will give place to the power of our king, it will writhe the whole world and bring it to an agony like that of death itself. But as the devils, though they struggled to the last and almost destroyed the frame of their wretched victims before they would come forth, were yet fain to come forth at the powerful word of Emmanuel, while he was yet with us; so when he shall come to be with us again, at the same powerful word, shall they be forced to surrender the heavens and the earth, and the whole orb of humanity which they have usurped, though they shall make it shudder and be agonized, and sweat forth its blood as if ready to give up the Ghost for ever. After which there will be peace. After which there will be peace, but till then never. For till then Satan shall rack the bowels, and tear the heart-strings of human peace; and stir up wars to the end of the earth for ever, until God, born of the virgin, shall again be with us. That, the end of the convulsion on the edge of which we presently stand, and of all convulsions which shall follow, till the consummation, is to bring about peace for ever, is manifest from all the Scriptures, of which I may quote as one instance out of a thousand, these verses of the forty-sixth Psalm. “The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come, behold the works of the Lord, what, desolations he hath made in the earth. He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.” Ps. xlvi. 6-11.

If any one doubt concerning the above interpretation of this the prophecy of the incarnation, I can refer him to high authority, even that of the angel Gabriel to the blessed virgin, and of Zacharias filled with the Holy Ghost, and of the angel to the shepherds, (interpreting the word Lord, as Jesus himself in the gospel, and Peter full of the Holy Ghost doth in the ii. Acts interpret it,) and of the star to the wise men, and of the great national counsel when they were called together by Herod, of which witnesses every one beareth the same testimony of this Child, that he was to sit upon the throne of David, and become David’s Lord, and rule over the house of Jacob for ever, and become the glory of his people Israel. And if any one doubt that he is to come again to fulfil these things which are written, I can refer him to Simon Peter’s discourses in the beginning of the Acts, and to all the New Testament; as if God giveth me time and permission, I shall yet make manifest to his church.

But this last and crowning attribute of the child that was born of the Virgin, containeth in it a deeper and more blessed mystery than the making of wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; bringing to the troubled ear of my soul the tidings of its peace, and to the church, and to the redeemed world, in the person of the great Mediator and Peace-Maker; in whom God is present and powerful to reconcile the world unto himself. It presents him to my mind in his character of King-Priest, having accomplished the reconciliation, and reigning over the reconciled; the Melchisedek who, as to his person, is King of Righteousness, and, as to his dominion, is King of Salem, which is King of Peace. It presents him to my heart as the King who reigneth therein by the power of his Holy Spirit and hath given me the victory over all my enemies: it presenteth him to my flesh as the King who shall yet accomplish my poor body’s emancipation from that vile prison house of death, by a still mightier power of that Holy Spirit whereof the residue is in his hand. It presents him to the Church as her Head, who hath broken down the middle wall of partition, which Satan had interposed between man and man, between nation and nation, making us all of every kindred and nation and tongue to love one another as he also loved us; who preserveth the unity and continuity of the Church’s life against all the powers of earth, against the evil counsels of the gates of hell; and who shall present her unto himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, holy and without blemish. It presents him also as the Head of the nations, ruling and defending them front the power of Satan; and blessing them with all the inheritance of the new covenant, which hath been confirmed to us in his death, and whereof the present Church is as it were the ark of the testimony, and the tabernacle of the witness, borne up and down the wilderness, not yet having found a place to rest. For I agree with my author in thinking that we are not yet put in possession of that new covenant, described in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and quoted by Paul in the eighth chapter of the Hebrews, which is made to Israel, and, in her, to all the world; (for she is, as it were, the mediatrix and mistress of the nations, at the time of her restoration) for the fourfold blessing of that covenant will by no means apply to any visible body at present on the earth; and only in the way of an earnest will apply to the spiritual Church, which is invisible, and cannot be said to contain Israel, or, as little, to contain all men. We have had the covenant confirmed in the blood of Christ, and we have received the heavenly manna, and the waters from the rock, and the indestructible righteousness, and, for our faithlessness, we are wayfaring in the desert till the appointed times and seasons shall have been accomplished. We have not yet entered into our rest, any more than Paul or the Hebrew Church had entered into theirs; but we are looking for it in that city whose builder is God. We are under our Prophet, who, like unto Moses, is conducting us: we have a Prophet and we have a Priest, but we have as yet obtained no King, because we have not obtained the kingdom which cannot be removed, but look for it.

The Christian Church, like Israel of old, sought for a king, and God gave her one in his wrath; a wicked Benjamite, him of the triple crown, who hath usurped the kingdom; whose spirit of phrenzy our David with his prophetic minstrelsy hath sometimes laid for a little while, but aye as he awoke he would aim a blow to smite him to the wall. And that stout old ireful king hath children whom David loveth as his own soul, and who love David more dearly than they love themselves. But our David hath been fain to separate himself, and with his chosen band to wander in the wilderness, a banished man: anointed, indeed, to the kingly office, and assuredly destined of God to over throw that wicked king over the people, whom God gave them in his wrath, because they lusted after courts and kings, in the days of Constantine and onward, till the crown was placed on the head of that Benjamite. Our anointed, King and his chosen ones, I say, are yet in the wilderness, not daring to appear, but persecuted by the usurper. Yet shall it come to pass, that the usurper shall fall upon the mountains of Gilboa, and with him Jonathan, whom David loved, yet not by David’s hand, but by one whom David hateth and destroyeth the instant he cometh into his presence. And then our King is crowned, and Israel is a kingdom, and under her King doeth valiantly upon all that rise up against the Lord; having “the high praises Of God in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all the saints.” Psalm cxlix. 7-9. Which being accomplished in the antitype of the warlike David; the pacific Solomon succeeds, that Prophet of Wisdom, that Prince of Peace, who never drew a sword, but sat instated in a throne of wisdom and an empire of great glory; honoured by all the kings around, who came to him for counsel and with offerings, and to have all questions of state, and enigmas, and dark sayings explained. And so “Behold king Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart.” Solomon’s Song, iii. 11.

I could expatiate largely upon that composite type of the kingly office of Christ, which was reared up by God in the persons of David and Solomon, the man of war and the Prince of Peace. I could show the mystery of Solomon’s knowing all plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that groweth on the wall: and the mystery of that mighty ocean of political and social wisdom, which is recorded in the book of the Proverbs; at which Lord Bacon, that wisest of uninspired men, used to stand aghast, to see how far his own human genius and cunning wit were over reached: —the former being to the saint the assurance of that intuitive insight into all natural things, which in Adam and his posterity hath become obscured; the second being to the saints the assurance of that sublime faculty of preserving the righteousness and well-being of the earth, over which they shall reign in the day of Christ’s glorious kingdom. But I forbear: only one word will I add upon this head. That when the combined type of David and Solomon’s kingdom had been given in three books of Scripture, and interpreted by more than half the Psalms, as if the end and purpose of the kingdom had been accomplished, it straight way fell into inextricable disorder, and floundered on from bad to worse until, at length, by the golden head of Daniel’s statue, it was taken away, and hath passed through the four successive oppressions in Daniel’s image, signified as about to accomplish the times of the Gentiles, during which Jerusalem was doomed by the Lord to be trodden under foot; after which times and seasons the kingdom shall be again restored unto Israel; and then the times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, the eternity of which Christ is the Father, the peaceful dominion of the earth of which he is the Prince, shall begin their long expected course of blessedness. “For unto us a Child is born unto us a Son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor; The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.” Isa. ix. 11. Amen and Amen.

That system of opinions with respect to the coming of Christ, which at present holds possession of the churches, gives no representation whatever either of Christ’s priestly or kingly office; and the system which with our author we maintain, aims at demonstrating from the scriptures, that there will be a manifestation of both, upon this very earth where both were set at nought. We do not deny that our Lord was a priest and a king in his estate of humiliation, though he manifested himself in neither the one character nor in the other, that is, neither fulfilled in the temple nor upon the throne the priestly or regal dignity; and we believe that now in his exaltation he hath entered into both, agreeing in this with the words of the Catechism of our church, ‘that he exerciseth the offices of a Prophet, a Priest, and a King, both in his state of humiliation and exaltation;’ and to that end I have shown the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices which his church is invested withal, even at this present time. But while we hold these things along with our brethren, we believe further, that the time is coming, yea and is now at hand, when, not at the right hand of God, but in the sight of this world, and in the despite of all his enemies, he shall as a king and priest be manifested on the earth, and of the earth hold the royal and the priestly sway for ever and for ever: be that whereof Meichisedek was the figure, be that whereof Moses was the figure; be that whereof Adam was the complete and perfect figure, the Father of an age yet to come. We add this to the present popular creed of the church, from which we take nothing away. We say that the day of the Lord which is the face of Peter’s warning, they interpret of a natural day, but which we in the spirit of his warning, and of John’s exposition, interpret of a thousand years, is the period during which this manifestation will be made. We interpret the conflagration of the earth to be its purification or baptism with fire, and not its annihilation. We doubt whether annihilation be an idea contained in the scriptures at all; for we perceive that the second death is not annihilation; nor are wicked men annihilated; nor is Satan, nor is death, nor is αδες, the place of separate spirits, which are all cast into a lake of fire. We believe that our Lord shall reign a certain limited time with his enemies under his feet, that is in a state of subjection; and afterwards that he shall reign for ever, with his enemies under the dominion of the second death. That there shall be a period of Satan’s imprisonment and of death’s subjection, and of the earth’s protection, government, and blessedness, in despite of all the powers of darkness; and that after this there will be an eternity of Satan’s second death, and death’s second death, and the second death of all wicked men and wicked angels, and their fruits of wickedness; which shall be to the earth an eternity of infallible blessedness, of God’s immediate presence, of the concentration of his love, of the peculiar abode and government of his Son. And that this immortal earth for ever, and the redeemed saints inheriting for ever their inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, and the Son of God their king, united to human nature for ever, shall be for ever the monument of God’s love and mercy to believing sinners, the enduring proof unto the universe of the incredible power of faith in the word of God, which when all the unfallen creatures of God behold, they may adore the triumphs of faith, and hold fast their allegiance, and delight in the glory of redeeming love, and in the victory of almighty grace over sin. While on the other hand the lake of the second death which burneth with fire and brimstone, where their worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched, where Satan the Prince of darkness, and the angels which kept not their first estate, where the grave and place of souls accursed, with all unbelievers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and, in short, every thing in the kingdom which offendeth, are tormented for ever and ever; this hell of the second death, with all that are doomed to abide therein, shall serve