all over the heathen world, till his temples were destroyed, and the churches of Christ were placed upon their ruins.

But then, as there was a remnant of the Canaanites, to whom the people were frequently joining themselves in marriage, and consequently relapsing into idolatry, according to that of the Psalmist-They did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among the heathen and learned their works, and they served their idols, which were a snare unto them: so the works of heathen authors, with the fables of their false gods, the abominable rites of their religion, and the ob scenity and immorality of their practices, are in like manner remaining among Christians; and it has been the custom for ages, all over Europe, to communicate the rudiments of languages and learning to young minds from heathen books, without due care to caution them against imbibing heathen principles; by which thousands of minds are corrupted, and through early prejudice rendered incapable of understanding the value of truth, and the abominable nature of heathen error. How frequently are heathen moralists applied to, when the finest rules of human prudence for the conduct of life are to be found in the scripture. But to go to the heathens for divi nity, as some authors do, is intolerable. They blow out the candle of revelation, and then go raking into the embers of paganism to light it again. Many good and learned men, of the first ability and taste, have observed and lamented the bondage we are under to heathen modes of education; but custom is a tyrant which hears no reason. However, there can be no harm, and I hope there will be no offence, in praying that God will enable us to correct all our

errors from the history of past miscarriages. This is the great use we are to make of our present subject. The dangers to the souls of men are the same in alages; and their errors are the same for sense, however they may differ in form: so that we cannot be surprised and ensnared by any temptation that comes upon the church, if we look to the things that are past.

LECTURE VIII.

ON THE PERSONAL FIGURES, OR TYPES, OF THE SCRIPTURES; PARTICULARLY THOSE OF MOSES AND JOSEPH, PROPOSED BY ST. STEPHEN, IN HIS APOLOGY TO THE JEWS.

THE Scripture would have supplied us with much more matter, of the same kind with that in the two preceding lectures. I might have set before you the history of Gideon's victory, and the fall of Sisera; which were signs of the spiritual victories of the church over the enemies of her salvation*. I might have considered the rejection of the Jews, as it was prefigured in the histories of Cain and Abel, of Jacob and Esau, of Isaac and Ishmael, of Ephraim and Manasses: to which I have added a view of their present state, as signified by the fall of the proud Nebuchadnezzar, and his temporary banishment among the beasts in a state of insanity, till the times of judgment passed over him. The grace of God to the heathen world, in admitting them to the salvation of the gospel, might have been exemplified by the healing of Naaman the Syrian, and the visitation of the widow of Sarepta which two cases our Saviour pointed out to the Jews at Nazareth; but they would not bear the most distant hint of the reception of the Gentiles; and were so filled with wrath, that they would

See Isaiah ix, 4. Psalm lxxxiii. 9.

have thrown him down headlong from the brow of an hill, (after the Roman fashion) as an enemy to his country; for so were traitors punished at Rome, by being thrown from the top of the Tarpeian Rock.

Many figures are to be found in the occurrences and circumstantials of the history of the gospel by those who read it with such an intention. In short, the history of the Old and New Testaments hath a secondary or prophetical sense in inany instances: its great events were signs and figures of things not seen as yet; and many of them are in force as such to this hour. Great things are still to be expected, of which we can form no conception, but as they are set before us in the figures of the sacred history. God shall descend, and the earth be on fire, and the trumpet shall sound, and the tribes of mankind shall be assembled, as formerly at Horeb. Distress shall come upon a wicked world, when its iniquity shall be full, as once upon Babylon, and afterwards upon the apostate Jerusalem. The armies of the Lord shall encompass it; and it shall be overthrown, with them that dwell therein. For this reason, the visitation of Jerusalem was foretold in such terms by our Blessed Lord, that in many of his expressions it is hard to distinguish, whether that, or the end of the world, is to be understood.

These things, however, I must at present leave to your meditation, and go forward to the figurative histories of individual persons; such as were the prophets, kings, heroes, and saints of the old testament; who by their actions, as well as their words, foreshewed the coming of that Saviour, in whom the saint made perfect through sufferings, the conqueror, the prince, the priest and the prophet, were to be united. As the things which befell the church at large, happened to

them for ensamples to the whole congregation of Christian people; so the things which befell the prophets of old happened for ensamples of the Saviour himself; that his character and history, as the true Son of God who should come into the world, might be infallibly ascertained and demonstrated, by a comparison with the various characters of those who had been most eminent in the church of old. Some of these characters were extremely different from others, and the events of their history very unlike; but the character and history of the Messiah was to comprehend them all. For this end their lives were purposely conformed by the divine Providence to the image of him that was to come after.

This consideration, when we see the force of it, will reconcile us to some strange things, which might appear very unreasonable, if they were to be considered only in themselves, not under the relation which they bear, and were intended to bear to higher and greater things. How monstrous would it seem in any other history, that a man should be buried in the body of a fish, and cast up alive again after three days upon the dry land! But if this strange thing happened, that it might afterwards be compared with the return of Jesus Christ from the dead, for the salvation of all mankind; then the preservation of Jonah becomes fit and reasonable; it being of infinite consequence to the world, that the fact of Christ's resurrection, when it should happen, should be admitted and believed; and so the case was worthy of the divine interposition. Jonah was not preserved by a miracle for his own sake, but for a sign, to instruct the people of God in the truth of their salvation and the peculiar means or mode of it. Two strange events of the same kind are more credible than one; because the objection is