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tary on the mind of God, and explains the world in which we believe.

It being then the professed design of the scripture to teach us such things as we neither see nor know of ourselves, its stile and manner must be such as are no where else to be found. It must abound with figurative expressions; it cannot proceed without them: and if we descend to an actual examination of particulars, we find it assisting and leading our faculties forward; by an application of all visible objects to a figurative use; from the glorious orb which shines in the firmament, to a grain of seed which is buried in the earth. In this sort of language did our blessed Saviour instruct his hearers; always referring them to such objects as were familiar to their senses, that they might see the propriety and feel the force of his doctrine. This method he observed, not in compliance with any customary figures of speech peculiar to the Eastern people, but consulting the exigence of human nature, which is every where the same. He spake a sort of language which was to be carried out into all lands; and which we of the western world are obliged to follow in our preaching of the gospel, because we cannot otherwise preach it so as to be understood by

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our hearers. Here I find it necessary to confirm what I have advanced by some examples.

As we have but imperfect notions of the relations and differences between life and death, our Saviour, when he was about to raise a maid to life, said to those who were present, the damsel is not dead, but sleepeth. He did not say, she is dead, and I will raise her to life; but she is asleep; whence it was to be inferred that she would awake. They who were not skilled in the divine language of signs and figures, laughed him to scorn; as if he had spoken in ignorance what was expressed with consummate truth and wisdom: for the substitution of sleep for death, when we have it upon such great authority, has the force and value of an whole sermon in a single word: it is a seed from whence a tree of life may be unfolded.

Upon another like occasion our Saviour expressed himself in the same manner to his disciples; our friend Lazarus sleepeth; and when they did not understand the force of his words, he said plainly, Lazarus is dead. When he spake of the deadness of the mind, a state, which, however real, must always be invisible, because the mind itself is so; he expressed it under the same term with the death of the body; let the dead bury their dead: of which expression

expression no sense can be made by those who are not aware, that the scripture speaks to us by things instead of words. Admit this principle, and then all is clear and consistent. It is as if Christ had said, "let those who are dead in "their spirits (with respect to the new life of "the gospel), employ themselves in burying "those who are dead in body; for they are fit "for nothing else but by following me and preaching the gospel, thou shalt raise men "from the death of fin unto the life of righte "ousness."

In the writings of the prophets, the spiritual blessings of the gospel are so constantly described under some allusion to nature, that their expressions are not true till they are figuratively interpreted. Let us take an example from the prophet Isaiah: Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made strait, and the rough places plain. Who ever heard that this was literally fulfilled? In what part of the world were all the mountains levelled; the vallies filled up; the crooked and rough places made strait and plain? But in the figurative sense, all these things were to be brought to pass in the minds of men at the publication of the gospel, when all flesh should see the salvation

of God. Then should the high and mighty of this world be confounded and brought low the humble should be exalted, the meek encouraged, the crooked ways of men rectified, their wild and rugged tempers softened and civilized.

The bible has farther difficulties arising from another principle. For it pleased God, for wise ends, to exercise the faith and devotion of his people with a system of forms and ceremonies, which had no value but from their signification. I mention no particulars here, because they will occur to us abundantly hereafter; but the fact is undoubted from that general assertion of St. Paul, that the law had a shadow of good things to come and again, that the instituted meats and drinks, the holy days, new moons and sabbaths, of the law, are a shadow of things to come, having their substance in the doctrines and mysteries of christianity; or, as the apostle speaks, whose body is of Christ. And therefore in the gospel things are still described to us in the terms of the law; the substance itself taking the language of the shadow, that the design of both may be understood: as where the apostle saith, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, &c. from the application of which term

to

* Luke iii. 6.

+ Heb x. I.

Col. ii. 17.

to the person of Christ, we are taught under this one word of the passover, that he is to us a lamb in meekness and innocence of manners; pure and spotless from every stain of sin; slain (and that without the breaking of his bones) for the redemption of his people from the wrath of the destroyer; and feeding with his body those who put away all leaven from their hearts.

But now, beside this first difficulty, which we are under, of comprehending the matter of the scripture from the peculiar manner in which it is delivered, we are under a second difficulty as to the receiving of it; without which our understanding of it will be very imperfect, if any at all. For the force of men's minds is generally found to be according to their affections; for which reason the disaffection of the Jew is attended with a very conspicuous weakness of the understanding. We may lay it down as a certain truth, confirmed by the experience of all men, that when any object is admitted into the mind, it must find a faculty there which corresponds with its own peculiar nature. When there is no appetite, the sweetest meat is of no value, and even the sight and savour of it may be disagreeable. When there is neither ear nor skill in music, heavenly sounds give no delight; and with the blind the beams of the sun give

no

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