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bodied only the first elements of the truth, it was meet that that alone should be represented, which was to constitute the groundwork of the whole. And seeing how the members of the ancient church were thus called, in every act of religious service, to witness to the three great truths, of their own condition as sinners, of God's reconcileableness to them even in that condition, and of the shedding of blood as the appointed means of reconciliation, we may gather strength to our faith, in these first principles of the gospel, as coeval with the very planting of a church in this fallen world, and especially may have our convictions deepened of the peerless magnitude and value of that one foundation-truth-"Christ crucified, the power of God and the wisdom of God unto salvation."

CHAPTER II.

THE IDEAS AND PRINCIPLES DEVELOPED IN THE FACTS OF PATRIARCHAL HISTORY, OR THE TYPES EMBODIED IN THE TRANSACTIONS OF THAT SPECIAL PROVIDENCE, WHICH GOD EXERCISED TOWARD HIS CHURCH, FROM THE PERIOD OF THE FALL, TO THE EVENTS CONNECTED WITH THE DISPENSATION OF MOSES.

IT has already been stated, that the types of history are not to be taken by themselves, but must be viewed in connexion with those which were grafted into the symbolical institutions of religious worship, and as only supplemental to them. While proceeding, therefore, to investigate the one, we must be careful to carry with us the remembrance of what had been previously taught in the other. Now, the patriarchal believers were made acquainted, as we have seen, and by the exercises of religion, had their minds perpetually impressed with the truths of their own guilt and sinfulness, of God's righteous, sin-avenging character,-of his gracious purpose to redeem the fallen,-of the mediatorial nature of the promised salvation, as requiring the interposition of one able and willing to vindicate the injured holiness of God, and provide a ground of acceptance for sinful men,-of the consequent readiness of God to receive those who sought him in the appointed way, namely, by sacrifices of slain victims; and finally, of a complete, ultimate restoration, both of the personal dignity of man, and of the inheritance he had lost. These truths were of so elementary and fundamental a nature, that in a sinful world, no religion could have been established without them, which was to have the effect of restoring man to fellowship with God. Though they were not to be seen in their full magnitude and importance, till they were clearly developed in the events of gospel history, yet they formed indispensable elements in the very first foundation of an economy of grace. Such ideas, therefore, are presupposed, rather than di

rectly taught, in the events of a typical providence; they were already interwoven with the religion which was set up and practised; and the truths for which we are to look, in the divinely arranged events of a preparatory scheme of providence, are of a subordinate and dependent nature, truths less essentially connected with the plan of redemption, than with the application of its principles and blessings to the hearts and consciences, the lives and destinies, of men. The more prominent and important of these, we shall now endeavour to extract from the portion of history at present under consideration, and to range in the order that seems most natural and appropriate.

SECTION I.

ELECTION BY GRACE.

The first that meets our observation, is one of the most repulsive in all ages to the natural man, but one most intimately connected with the progress of the divine plan,-the doctrine of election by grace, or the important fact, that the redeemed were to be, not mankind at large, but only an elect seed, chosen by God himself, and appointed to salvation. It was most natural, that men should at first have judged otherwise, and that knowing God was minded to turn again the captivity of sin, they should have expected him to leave none a prey to its dominion. This presumption affectingly discovers itself in the joyous announcement, which escaped from Eve at the birth of her first-born child, "I have gotten a man from the Lord;" never apparently doubting, that he whom she thus hailed as the gift, should also be a child, of God-one of that promised seed, which was to bruise the head of the serpent.* The promise seemed to make no distinction between one portion of her seed and another. It merely gave intimation of a general fact, and we cannot wonder, that the feelings of maternal affection should have led her to take it in a sense so wide as to comprehend all her offspring. Never was mother destined to receive a sorer disappointment; and when in progress of time she saw her second son, who had been named Abel, (emptiness,) in token probably of his inferior natural gifts or appearance, visited with peculiar marks of Divine favour and blessing, while her eldest son, rising in proud rebellion against Heaven, at once slew his righteous brother, and became the head of a malignant race of apostates, she then came to learn, in sorrow of heart, that it was not all her offspring, nor even perhaps that portion of it, which to man's eye might seem most likely to receive the honour, but an election according to grace, in whom the promise of redemption was to be made good.

This, I think, is the utmost that can be gathered from Eve's exclamation regarding her views of redemption. The turn sometimes given to it, "I have gotten a man, the Jehovah," as if she looked upon this son as already the incarnate Redeemer, is scarcely allowable in a grammatical point of view, and besides, presupposes an amount of knowledge, which it did not consist with the divine plan to communicate so early. That Jehovah was to be himself the Redeemer, and as such was to be born as a babe into the world, was one of the latest announcements of prophecy.

A visible and open testimony for this truth was kept up through the whole of the antediluvian period, by the separation of the church from the world, which, as far as one can gather from the brief and scattered notices preserved of the period, seems to have been marked by different forms of worship, and manners widely dissimilar, rendering it necessary for the two sections of the human family to live in great measure apart from each other, and even to occupy distinct localities. So much at least seems to be implied in what is said of Cain, and the party who adhered to him, "going out from the presence of the Lord," building for themselves a city, becoming giants and men of renown by their deeds of proud daring and violence, and their daughters being regarded as simply "daughters of men," viewed in connexion with what is said on the other side, of Eve's having, at the birth of Seth, got another son in the room of martyred Abel, of the party to which he belonged, calling upon the name of the Lord, (that is, no doubt, according to the mode originally instituted by God,) of their separate genealogy, and their being familiarly known under the designation of "the sons of God.” Such obvious and palpable distinctions manifestly bespeak the different and opposite parentages of the two classes of the human family,-that the one class only were. related to God as their Father, and that consequently his people were to be an elect seed. The truth of God in this respect, no doubt, came to be obscured when the church began to fall from her steadfastness, and the sons of God married the daughters of men, as if there were no grounds of separation broad enough to keep the two parties any longer asunder. The waters of the deluge, however, soon came to pour confusion on these unprincipled alliances, and to inflict the judgment of Heaven on the unbelief out of which they sprung. And when all had perished but that one family which adhered to the cause of truth and righteousness amid universal defection, the most awful demonstration was given of the fact that God's people are an elect seed-a seed, indeed, so elect, that it was possible for them to be reduced to the smallest conceivable remnant, while still the cause of Heaven was with them, and all besides were children of perdition.

The history of the new world did not proceed far, till other symptoms of the same fact discovered themselves. That even in Noah's family there was an election, shone out but too prominently in the behaviour of Ham toward his father, on the sad occasion of his backsliding, who, like a true child of the wicked one, seemed to rejoice in the iniquity, and to glory in his father's shame. And we pass but a few generations to get to the time of Abraham, when this great truth was in some respects more fully brought out, than it had ever been before. The new series of divine manifestations, commencing in the person and family of Abraham, gave undeniable proof that the people of God are not only a distinct seed, but elect according to his own free and sovereign grace. This had been implied, rather than plainly taught, in the facts of antediluvian history; and though a pious and reflecting mind might easily

have gathered that it was God who made the one class to differ from the other, yet, so far as we know, there was nothing in that period of the world's history which broadly displayed the grace of election. But it obtained a very striking display in the line of providences which began with the call of Abraham. Of him it might be said, in a peculiar sense, that "the Lord did choose him,' (Nehem. ix. 7,) singled out, as he was, from his father's house, though certainly not the oldest, apparently indeed the youngest of the family, and employed like the rest in "serving other gods," (Josh. xxiv. 2.) The change to the better in his condition, therefore, which passed over him, when he was honoured with the peculiar favour and blessing of Heaven, had its origin solely in the distinguishing grace of God. He stood forth a living monument and witness of the truth, that the "Lord has mercy on whom he will have mercy." The testimony was again renewed in the case of Isaac, who was preferred before Ishmael, as being in a sense quite peculiar the gift of God, in his very birth the offspring of singular and sovereign grace. And when it pleased God still farther to limit the seed, with which the word of promise was to be connected, by selecting only one of Isaac's sons, a still more remarkable confirmation was given to the same truth; for not only was the younger chosen before the elder, but the election was made and intimated before the children were born, and consequently "before they had done either good or evil," to give occasion to the preference. Nay, even within this narrow circle it appeared, in the course of time, that there was a circle narrower still-that they were "not all Israel, who were of Israel." Through every generation we discern the manifest traces of a believing and spiritual, as opposed to an unbelieving and carnal portion. And of the three grand distinctions which connected one tribe with the government, one family with the throne, and one individual with the person of Messiah, we find all bestowed in a way of sovereign grace, -the first being given to Judah, though neither the best nor the oldest in his father's house, the second to David when only a shepherd boy tending his father's flocks, and the last to the virgin Mary, "a handmaiden of low estate. (Ps. lxxviii. 68, 70; 1 Sam. xvi. 7-10; Luke i. 48.)

We have thus a long chain of providences, reaching almost from the commencement of the world, to the birth of him, in whose work and kingdom all previous exhibitions of divine truth were to receive their final form and development, all manifesting the real subjects of divine favour and blessing to be a chosen seed, and chosen, not on the ground of any qualities in themselves entitling them to the distinction, but in the exercise of free and sovereign grace on the part of God. In one respect, all such preceding manifestations of this principle, pointed to the man Christ Jesus, as the head of redeemed humanity, and in him it was made perfect. For in so far as the principle consisted in the exercise of a divine choice, electing to peculiar love, service and blessing, without respect to, or even in despite of any apparent grounds entitling to the choice,

in none might such a principle have been expected to find, and in none did it find, so grand and striking a manifestation, as in Christ. He was incomparably beyond all others, the chosen servant of God, "his elect in whom his soul delighted," the corner-stone, which was to be laid as a foundation for the glorious building of a redeemed church, and in which the whole was to be fitly framed together, therefore, like no other, elect and precious, (Isa. xxviii. 16; xlii. 1; Ps. cxviii. 22; Eph. ii. 20; &c.) Nor did he become thus the object of the Father's choice after he appeared on earth, and had done things worthy of the Father's régard; he was so before time began, and is therefore said to have been "foreordained before the foundation of the world," and as the Lamb of God, whose blood alone can cleanse from sin, "slain from its foundation," (1 Pet. i. 20; Rev. xiii. 8.) Yet when he appeared, how far was he from seeming to the eye of man, the fit object of such a peculiar regard! How obscure in his parentage! How poor and unfurnished in his natural condition! How striking the contrast between the lowliness of his outward state, and the loftiness of his claims! And when he began to put forth the latter, how much was there still in the former to countenance the surmises of unbelief, "Whence got this man this wisdom? Is not this the carpenter's son?" That one so humble and despised, should yet have been the Son of the Highest, sole head of restored humanity, and by the Father's appointment heir of all things, what could so singularly manifest the height and sovereignty of election, as moving in a sphere far above man's wisdom, and pursuing a course which provokes only the scorn and opposition of a sinful world.

So far the doctrine of election was applicable to the man Christ Jesus, and found in him its highest exemplification. But as he was without sin, in his very conception separate from sinners, there must evidently be a limitation in the respect it bears to him. For the principle of an elect seed, chosen in every case without the reality, and often in the marked and manifest absence of the very appearance, of desert in the objects of choice, could obviously receive a complete and proper development only in the people of Christ. And this development in them, from the very nature of things, and the rise made in the divine plan at the establishment of Christ's kingdom, must necessarily be, not only of a personal kind, having respect. to them as individuals, but to such also as heirs of salvation. The election, which we have traced through so long a chain of providences, had for its immediate and ostensible object, the appointment sometimes of individuals, and sometimes of whole families, to certain outward distinctions and privileges on earth, which did not in general, at least, of necessity infer, and earry along with them a personal interest in salvation. Israel as a people, were objects of electing grace, but only in regard to the outward standing and privileges of the covenant; in regard to the actual enjoyments of God's favour and blessing, "they were not all Israel, who were of Israel,"-there was an election within that

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