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revealed from heaven. Nothing could stop their career. The prophets said, "Withhold thy throat from thirst;" and they replied, No, we "have loved strangers, and after them we will go.". For a long season the Lord had patience with them, and loaded them with benefits; to all which they were insensible: "but he being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity; yea, many a time turned he his anger away, for he remembered that they were but flesh." At length, it became necessary to bring them to their senses by afflictions; and the heathens, who had been their betrayers, became their tyrants and scourges. It was not enough for the compassion of a God to forgive the wretched Jews: he did more, he declared by the prophets he would forgive the tyrants and spoilers of his people, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Ethiopians, and number them with the people of God, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance." The description of this is the beautiful expression I mean; "In that time shall the present be brought unto the Lord of Hosts of a people scattered and peeled, a people terrible from their beginning hitherto, a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of Hosts." It was a law with the Jews, given by Moses, to divide the prey taken in war into two parts, one half to the soldiers and the other half to the people. Out of the half belonging to the soldiers, "one soul of five hundred," and out of the people's half, one of fifty," both of men and beasts were dedicated to the Lord, and this was called "the Lord's tribute." In allusion to this the prophet saith, "A present of a people scattered and peeled, a present of a terrible people shall be brought unto the Lord of Hosts." Methinks I see the inhabitants of Jerusalem assembled, the solemn procession of the army through the city, the spoils taken in war carried in triumph, the numbers of the slain published by the heralds, the trembling captives in chains going with aching hearts, full of remorse, contrition, and repentance, up towards the temple, dreading and adoring the God, whom, till now, they had never

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known, and who, by this terrible calamity, brought them to the knowledge and fear of himself. Go forward, ye once terrible people! You are the Lord's tribute, a present to the Lord of Hosts; ascend the mountain, enter the palace of the King of kings, his incense is smoking, his sacrifices are bleeding, his priests are in waiting, his Levites singing his praises, and his high priest, the chief officer in his service, hath an express order to disappoint your fears, to exceed your hopes, and say to you, "Blessed be Egypt, my people. Behold, Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia; Ethiopia shall stretch out her hands unto God." All these figures will be realized at the last day, when "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands out of every tongue, and people, and kindred, and nation, the ransomed of the Lord, shall return and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. Among that happy company may you all be; and in order to that," beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." God grant you this grace. To him be honour and glory forever. Amen.

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DISCOURSE XI.

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION SHOULD NOT BE MIXED WITH

THAT OF THE JEWS.

[AT FENSTANTON.]

1 TIMOTHY Vi. 20, 21.

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace be with thee.

BRETHREN,

You have heard of a court of priests in some foreign countries, called the Inquisition, a cruel court in which men are tried (not by the laws of Christ, you may be sure), cast, and condemned to die for not believing as they are ordered. I have heard of a blunt prisoner, who, after the judge had passed a terrible sentence of being burnt to death on him, which he finished with praying the Lord to have mercy on his soul, cried, "My Lord, I am sensible of the favour your lordship intends me, but cannot I go to heaven without all this?" shrewd question, and not foreign to the purpose; for if the same ends may be obtained by easy and gentle measures which are proposed to be obtained by difficult means, prudence requires us to choose the former.

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This exercise of discretion, as it appears in a wise man in the management of all his worldly affairs, will

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certainly appear in religion; and when he hath the whole of religion, all the ends to be obtained, and all the means proper to obtain them, he will be perfectly satisfied, and count every addition an incumbrance. Such were the sentiments of the apostle Paul in regard to the Christian religion, with this caution, that the Christian religion was not framed by man, and put together by the discretion of a frail mortal; but it was the prudence of God, that is to say, the wisdom of God applied to the practice of the duties of life. On this account he consulers religion as a deposit, a religion committed to the care and trust of the apostles of Christ, and to be laid up in their writings without any alteration, for the use of Christians to the end of the world. "The glorious Gospel of the blessed God was committed to my trust." In the same just and beautiful light he exhorts Timothy to consider himself, and in him all other Christians, as put in trust, and holding what they held of the Christian religion, much or little, as trustees, who would be called to give an account. Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust." The virtue of a trustee is fidelity, a doctrine fully taught by our Saviour to his apostles. "He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who shall give you that which is your own?" This reasoning is very fair, and perfectly applicable to our subject. The Christian religion is not ours; the wisdom that designed it, the goodness that is displayed in it, the power which effects it, all belong to God. The Scriptures are not ours, the prophecies are his, the history is his, the promises, the commands, the ordinances, the threatenings, are all his, and we have nothing but the use of them. If we lose this just notion, and dispose of one part, the same principle will justify our disposal of another part: if we be " just in the least," we may be "unjust in the greatest" article, and so might dispose of the greatest and most

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essential part of this divine religion, and get rid of the Mediator himself. Our apostle thought the primitive church "a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish ;" and so it is in its constitution. Its doctrines are perfect, its practice complete, its power sufficient; and on this principle he exhorted Timothy to "keep the good confession," which "Jesus Christ witnessed before Pontius Pilate, without spot, and unrebukable," until the appearing of our Lord. When Pilate was trying Christ for his life, he asked him, "Art thou a king?" To which Jesus replied, "My kingdom is not of this world." This is the good confession, which Paul exhorted Timothy to "keep without spot," and he calls this confession a commandment; for it included, as he expressed it a little before," righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness," and all the other virtues of a Christian profession.

The Christian religion stands distinguished from the Jewish dispensation in this respect. Religion among the Jews was performed with a great many ceremonies; and if a man would have shown his reverence of God în that country, he must have purchased beasts, and other offerings, and sacrificed them in the temple devoted to that purpose; if he would have dedicated his children to piety, he must have caused them to be circumcised, and so of the rest but religion as Jesus Christ taught it, is freed from all these ceremonies, and delivered from a vast expense, a world of trouble, and a thousand occasions of sin. With a view, therefore, to preserve the Christian religion in this purity, Paul often attacks, in his writings, a sort of Jews, who in the main approved of Christianity, but who thought it would appear less liable to censure, and to more advantage in the eyes of their countrymen, if it were administered as the religion of the Jews had been, for which too, they had the examples of Moses, and many other eminent men, whose names were honourably recorded in their genealogies. The apostle vehemently opposes this kind of men, and speaks even with contempt of the subject, which they wanted to incorporate with the in

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