pleads for the one, or her tranfgreffions call DISC. for the other, how are our hearts filled and warmed with a sense of his goodness, who makes the world and all the perfons and things in it conspire to promote the felicity of his chofen, who governs the universe as head of his church, who loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob! It shall be my endeavour, in the following discourse, to set before you a fuccinct view of the divine economy in the government of the world, confidered in this light, viz. as relative to the affairs of the church. The mercies we this day commemorate will close an induction of particulars, and the use we are to make of them be the natural and obvious refult of the whole. But shall we not be faid to aggrandize the church, to think of her more highly than we ought to think, when we thus represent the kings of the earth as miniftering unto her, and put all things as it were under her feet? This may be faid. But it xv. XV. DISC. it will be faid by none who have duly weighed the difference between things temporal and things eternal, and have learned to give the preference where it is so evidently due. The commission of political government extends no farther than this world. Every man's death dissolves his relation to an earthly kingdom, and all civil distinctions drop into the dust together. But, as says the Apostle, ημων πολιτευμα, " our citizenship is in heaven," from whence St. John faw the Christian Church, " that "holy city, the new Jerufalem, descend," and whither she will again be received up, nay, whither she is continually ascending, the triumphant part of her, as well as her all-glorious head, being there already. Hence it is, that the church even upon earth is styled "the kingdom of God;" the spirits departed and the faithful who remain being alike the subjects of it, and together making up what the Apostle calls the whole family of heaven and earth named after Christ; who, as he now ratifies in heaven the sentence of the church when XV. when justly inflicted on earth, so will he DISC. one day enable her to "execute judgment" on the angels as well as on this world, seeing her head is Lord of them all. They are not "members of his body, of his flesh, " and of his bones; for he took not on him " the nature of angels, but he took on him "the feed of Abraham;" to whom they are "all ministering spirits, sent forth to " minister to them who," through the faith of their father Abraham, " are heirs " of salvation." What wonder then that we find these exceeding great and precious promises made to the church, with relation to the kingdoms of the earth:-"Kings " shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens "thy nurfing mothers; they shall bow "down to thee with their face towards the "earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet. "The fons also of them that afflicted thee " shall come bending unto thee, and all "they that despised thee shall bow them" selves down at the foles of thy feet, and " they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the "Zion of the holy one of Ifrael. Therefore " thy DISC. "thy gates shall be open continually; they XV. " shall not be shut day nor night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the "Gentiles, and that their kings may be "brought: for the nation and kingdom " that will not fserve thee shall perish; yea, " those nations shall be utterly wafted." Thus glorious are the things spoken of thee, thou city of GOD. May we not then take up our parable like Balaam, and faySurely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Ifrael. How shall we degrade her, whom God hath so highly exalted? How shall we lightly esteem her, whom the King of heaven thus delighteth to honour? We cannot do it, until we have forgotten who it was that died to redeem her. Let none therefore be offended, but rather let all greatly rejoice, and glorify GOD on this behalf, when they find the affairs of the kingdoms and empires of the earth directed and disposed by an unseen hand in fuch a manner as may best comport with her XV. her interests, for whom the world itself was DISC. away 1 |