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LECTURE VI.

THE EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH IN PERGAMOS.

REV. ii. 12-17.

And to the angel of the church in Pergamos, write, These things saith He which hath the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Baluk to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches. To him that and

overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.

THE view which I have given of these epistles, considered in general, is, that in them is exhibited the constitution of true Christian churches under Christ the chief Shepherd invisible, and the visible representatives of him, called angels, for the ministry of word and of sacrament, held together by the one Spirit of Christ in all love and obedience, and preserved amongst the nations to hold up, in the midst of darkness and cruelty, and all temptation, the true and faithful name of God, to the end that men may believe thereon, and be saved from the wrath to come. Wherein,

as in so many seed-beds, prepared with all good culture, might be sown the seed of the kingdom, and the children of the kingdom might grow up, and testify to the Father's love to his creatures, though apostate, Christ's power to reclaim and sanctify the chief of sinners; that all men, having a continual and abiding proof of the promise fulfilled, may be left without all manner of excuse, if they do not come unto God, and be in like manner recovered from the misery and bondage of prodigal outcasts, into the adoption and liberty of the sons of God. Witnesses to the power of Christ in the Spirit, are these churches, as the Jews are witnesses to his power in the word; we, the proof of his supremacy over spiritual wickednesses,they, the proof of his providence over the nations of the earth; both together, of his lordship over all things which God hath created and made; forasmuch as though the spiritual wickednesses in the heavenly places have sought to corrupt us, and the rulers of the darkness of this world to destroy them, like the burning bush we are never consumed, are preserved by Christ's Spirit and providence, by his power and sovereignty over things visible and things invisible. When Jehovah made a covenant with the people of the former dispensation, it began by setting forth the holy constitution of law and government, and religion, under which they should live (Ex. xx-xxiii), by which they might be judged, and to which they might reduce themselves, in all after periods of their history: so judge I, that in this prophetic history of the people of the New Testament, through all their errors and apostasies, there is set forth, in the first place, the nature and constitution, the privileges and obligations, of that society or fellowship which he wisheth his church to hold by, and if they be seduced away, thereto to return with all carefulness, lest he come and visit them with his wrath and indignation. In no lower a place do I set these seven Epistles, than as the constitutional charter of the chosen generation and royal priesthood, and holy nation, and peculiar people of God; by which all canon law, codes of discipline, acts of ecclesiastical judicatories should guide themselves, and according to which they shall all be tried by the great Head of the church.

Next, as a constituent part of the revelation of Jesus

Christ, these Epistles are entitled to the most exact consideration. They exhibit Christ as the Head of the church, the Father of the chosen seed, who, by means of the ordinances, doth feed and nourish up to manhood all those to whom God the Father giveth faith in his name. They present him as the great vine of life, nourishing fruitful branches in the midst of storms, and perils, and persecutions of many generations. They shew the church as a substantial and essential part of the Divine purpose and decree, against which the gates of hell are not able to prevail; which persevereth, though all the world be set against it. And by this superiority to a world's temptations, by this union with Christ, maintained against a world's distractions, not only is the supernatural character of the church demonstrated, but likewise the Divine character and power of that Holy Spirit who preserves the union between Christ and his people against all powers in creation. For that which prevails against all creation, inust be the Creator, the very Creator himself. As the person sustaining our weak and wicked nature in full communion of holiness and will with God, is proved to be one with God; so he, maintaining the union of the church with Christ, against all diabolical and worldly attempts, is proved likewise to be God. The incarnation and resurrection of Christ proved him to be God, the preservation of a church in the midst of a persecuting world, proves the Holy Ghost to be God: and the manner of the proof in both cases is the same. That which can withstand and overcome the creation, must be no less than the Creator, who is God. In this Divine work of maintaining a church united to Christ, in despite of a confederate conflicting world of wicked spirits and wicked men, Christ himself is the worker. He it is who from himself, as from the heart and head of power, shoots forth the circulating stream of vital holiness and supernatural strength, which maintains their most wondrous life in the midst of so many deaths. Upon his flesh and blood they are fed, and they live by him, as he, in the days of his flesh, lived by the Father. This supernatural, this divine work of gainsaying creation's evil mind, and withstanding creation's utmost violence, as it is acted by Christ, proveth him to be Lord of creation, its Controller, and its Redeemer, and its Saviour; while

the express limitation of bodily place and human power, to which by incarnation he hath restricted himself, doth require that the Holy Ghost, by whose service he thus pervades all place, and resists all evil, and sustains a perpetual church in the midst of a wicked and rebellious world, must be himself a Divine and Almighty person, one with the Creator,-the Creator. The same advantage which God took of our mortal, sinful, and corrupt nature, to prove the Divinity of his Son, and his own almighty grace in endowing it with holiness, and with power, and with life everlasting, hath he taken of a rebel world, in order to prove through the church, the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, and the Lordship of the Man Christ Jesus, from whom the Holy Ghost proceedeth. Therefore it is, that throughout this book the nations and the kings of the earth are allowed to confederate against the Lord and his Anointed. Satan and the powers of darkness, death and sin, all cruelty and craftiness and delusive power of Paganism, subtle craftiness of Papacy, hard heartedness, mockery, and ridicule of Infidelity, are allowed to combine and work in all ways against the Lord's faithful ones, to the end that the antagonist power of the Spirit, and the Spirit's Director, the Man Christ Jesus, may be manifested to be above creation, above all power, whether visible or visible, which is the same as to manifest that it is altogether creative and divine. For I hold it as an axiom, that what is above the creation, is the Creator; that what resists and overcomes the world, visible and invisible, is the power of God. And this surely is the way in which God proves his own Godhead, by mighty acts, controlling wickedness, and bringing huge confederacies of evil to an untimely and disgraceful end, as when he destroyed Pharaoh and Sennacherib; and when he shall destroy evil, it is that “Men may know that I am God:" "That my name may be exalted." And above all, when Antichrist is destroyed by the coming of Christ, in the day of his wrath, then "all nations shall come and worship before him, for his judgments are made manifest" (Rev. xv. 4).

Thirdly: These Epistles ought to be contemplated as together forming a most important part in the structure of this book; whose plan cannot be studied, whose completeness cannot be understood, without them.