the gracious purpose of man's redemption and restoration to eternal life was never forgotten; that, in every state of religious knowledge, indications of it were given, conformable to the circumstances of the times, and correfponding with the method of inftruction then in ufe; and that whatever ordinances God thought fit to prescribe, either to the Patriarchs before the Law, or their pofterity under the Law, "Chrift was in fact the end of them all, for righteousness, unto every one that believeth'."

SERMON V.

ACTS x. 43.

TO HIM GIVE ALL THE PROPHETS WIT

NESS.

T was the will of God, that the reli

IT

gion, which in his good time was to become univerfal, fhould be announced to the world long before its actual publication in two ways; figuratively, by the ceremonies of the Mofaical Law; and literally, by the defcriptions of the holy Prophets, who fpake as the fpirit of God directed them.

Of the firft of these two methods of previous representation, I have attempted

in my former difcourfe to explain the true and legitimate ufe; I now proceed with a more affured ftep, and lefs apprehenfion of error, to point out the origin of the second, and to trace its progrefs, from its earliest commencement to its ceffation in the Jewish Church.

In the addreffes of our bleffed Lord to the Jews of his days, one of the characters, which he constantly affumes to himself, is this, that he is the perfon of whom Mofes in the Law, and the Prophets, did write: "I that speak unto thee Am He," is his own emphatical expreffion to the woman of Samaria and when, after his refurrection, he is converfing with the two difciples who knew him not, he speaks of his own actions, and his own fufferings, as being neceffary, because they had been foretold; he fays, "O fools, and flow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have written! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?"

The awful scheme of Prophecy, if it be

a John iv. 26.

Luke xxiv. 25, 26.

con

confidered in a general view, not only refers to the coming of Chrift in the flesh, and to the introduction and final eftablishment of Christianity, but includes also in its comprehenfive range the fortunes of almost all the kingdoms of the antient world; it is not the rife, or the overthrow, of opulent states and mighty empires alone, of Tyre, of Egypt, or of Babylon, which the Holy Spirit predicts; but with equal precision, and equal certainty, it marks the time, and the manner, in which the inferior kingdoms of Moab, and Edom, of Ammon, and of Amalek, are gradually to yield to the increafing power of their neighbours; and it does fo, because all the kingdoms of the ancient world, as they rofe fucceffively to power, were implicated in fome way or other in the fates and fortunes of the people of Ifrael, either as the minifters of Almighty vengeance, to punish that people for difobedience and rebellion, or as the agents of his mercy, to rescue them from banishment, and to reinstate them in the poffeffions of their inheritance.