wont to be done with respect to the angels: inasmuch as this is intended to distinguish the saved of the creatures of God from the lost, it is true and profitable; but no further. The salvation of the angels is an entirely different mystery from the redemption of men; different, I mean, not in respect to election in Christ as the only cause, but different in respect to the manner and the end, and every thing which concerns the manifestation of God. And if I err not, there is a characteristic difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament saints, in this respect, That the former were gathered under a dispensation of law, the latter under a dispensation of no law but of the Spirit; and forasmuch as they honoured the law by honouring Christ in the law through their faith, I have a strong impression that they shall be raised up to govern the world by that same moral law which is the transcript of God's image upon flesh and blood: to rule as kings the world by that law of righteousness which they, of all that were under it, were the only persons rightly to understand and properly to use. And forasmuch as we are baptized out of the law altogether, yea, out of flesh and blood, with which alone the law hath to do, I believe that we shall with Christ in the spiritual Jerusalem, have the honour and prerogative of enjoying that spiritual rule and blessedness of which we have here the first-fruits. So that really they who talk so much about THE SPIRITUAL are altogether correct, if they only knew the meaning of the words which they are using. But because they will call frames and feelings and invisible states of the mind the only SPIRITUAL, and will not see THE SPIRITUAL as standing in acts, which, beginning with the invisible, shall be perfected in the visible, until the whole creation, dust and all, shall be SPIRITUAL; therefore it is that they can understand nothing but the cant of experiences, and do dread facts, outward facts, and realities, as a most unfit subject of religion, as highly unspiritual. This is a sore evil under the sun. It will bring the church to perdition: she will become, I think she is become, in her principles fouler than the world. I believe, nay, I know, I feel, that things are done under the garb of religion, and applauded, which the honour of gentlemen, which the fair dealing of merchants, which common neighbourly kindness, would not sanction.

The very meaning of those eyes behind and before, as well as within, is to express the spiritual discernment with which she is endowed in all directions whatever. Before, that she may look forward and discern the coming events, and tell of them with a prophetic voice. For that this is one, yea and the chief, prerogative of the church, we see by her history. in the time before Christ: and that she hath lost any thing by the coming of Christ, surely no one will maintain. I am not speaking of extraordinary gifts, although wherefore these have ceased I have never found a divine able to tell me; and that they are asserted for all the Reformers and Covenanters, and other most faithful members of the church, I find in their biographers; which indeed this infidel age, with a sacrilegious hand, is beginning to purge of all these extraordinary actings of the Spirit, regarding them as superstitious: but of these I do not so much speak, as of the standing and ordinary power and privilege of the church to be able to look forward and discern what is about to come. This I as surely believe, as I believe that Christ promiseth it as an universal acting of the Holy Ghost in these words: “ Howbeit, when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak and he will shew you things to come (John xvi. 13). Who are these men that dare to stand up and say that it is not the office of the Spirit to shew us things to come. It passeth my understanding how men dare affront God's word with such flat denials, in whose room I would not stand for any reward of a world's applause for what saith the Lord? "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven but whosoever shall do, and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. v. 19). But they have come to deny not only that the Spirit of prophecy hath ceased from the living church, that the cherubim altogether want the eyes before, but also that the capacity of revealing future events hath ceased from the prophetic Scriptures; which are not to be understood, they say, till the event is fully come to pass. I could tear my beard and my garments and make myself bald, and sit in the ashes and be unclean

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until the evening, when i hear such things spoken in the bosom of Christ's church. The Papacy never came to this pitch of infidelity. Protestantism, and Scotland in the foremost rank, as having had the ten-talent portion, is destined to shew to what a pitch of infidelity a professing church may come.

And why?

But what really is the truth? Is it that the church loveth not prophesying? is it that the gift of foresight and providence hath ceased from mankind? Oh no! there never was so much prediction as in this day. That party, that schism, that pharisaical sect in the church, called the religious world, have been prophesying for the last thirty years in all ways, when money could be raised by it, that the world is to be converted in almost no time. Our politicians, in every one of their organs, in all the great periodical publications, whether Tory, Whig, or Republican, do regularly prophesy once every quarter of a year, and some of them oftener; and they also shew forth the signs of the times. And the church applauds, and the world applauds. There never was such a rage for looking out a-head. because the ship is striking every now and then, and breakers are boiling all around. Much need to look out in the foreships. And wherefore this universal indignation and contempt towards us? Why might we not prophesy quietly in one corner, and look out according to our eyesight? Are we not men as well as ye? with sagacity endowed as well as ye? oh, ye self-sufficient men! Aye, what is the difference between our prophesyings and yours, that the men of wisdom and understanding, and sober minds, in and out of the church, should be ashamed of us? It is, oh it is, ye scorners, ye infidel scorners, because we are the only persons who make use of God's word in our prophesyings. We submit our minds to his teaching, we give ourselves to study his method, we apply ourselves to his book of prophecies; we believe it, we study it; and we advance with God's chart to the work of looking out and shewing the course of our hopes and desires. Therefore ye have us in derision, oh ye unbelieving men, ye neglecters of God's word! that ye may have licence to indulge your own understandings. How can I be but indignant? You do and say things to bring heaven. down upon our heads; and when those who fear Heaven's

wrath are grieved, you say, Be calm, why doth thy zeal burn so hot? Ah me! let me die the death, O Lord! rather than stand by and hear thy word and thy church so traduced without the liberty of uttering my indignation. The time may come when it shall be wiser to be as one dumb, and not opening the mouth. But till then we will speak forth the indignation we have, at seeing God's word and church so dishonoured.

Eyes behind, to reflect and consider the doings of the Lord in the days of old; which surely is one of the most dutiful and profitable occupations of the church, as a great many of the Psalms do shew forth: for example, the Ixxvii th, where the Psalmist, oppressed and overwhelmed with the untowardness of things, and not able to discern God in the midst of them, doth recover his faith by this act of reflection, saying, "This is my infirmity but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of the Lord: surely I will remember thy wonders of old" (verses 10, 11). To look back, as well as to look forward, is therefore a prerogative of the church of the living God. To call to remembrance, and set forth the doings of the Lord before the sight of men, that they may trust in him, as well as to look forward and warn them of the coming evil, if they set light by the instruction and refuse to put their trust in the Rock of ages. For the end both of verifying and of cultivating this faculty in the church, it is, I believe, that so much of the Scriptures consisteth of history; one part of history, and another part of prophecy: and this is the ground upon which learning is indispensable in the church, and above all to the ministers of the church; for how shall we be able to reflect, if we know not the thing which hath taken place in the old time. To this the knowledge of languages, and of all other monuments of antiquity is indispensable; and therefore the study of the dead languages is ever to be required at the hands of the ministers of religion. These are the objects which the retrospective eyes regard. And if these objects be not distinctly exhibited, the church is not able to derive any profit from her endowment. In this service the Church of England hath, perhaps more than any other member of the body, laboured abundantly and by their laborious researches into antiquity have taken the vain glory out of the mouth of the

Romanists, as if to them we owed the Christian faith; which I marvel much to see a liberal Doctor of the same church giving again to Pope Gregory and the Monk Augustine. Oh how sweet it is to look back upon the dealings of the Lord with his church in the past times, especially in our native land! Much do I grieve that the Reformation should have cast the earlier history of the church so much into the shade. So far as the Church of Scotland is concerned, I believe that our historians have lost much in foreshortening, as they too frequently do, all anterior to that era. If I mistake not, the most glorious period of the Church of Scotland was from the time of the Culdees onward till the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when she began to be oppressed with Papal darkness; whether as respecteth learning, or missionary zeal in all parts of the world. If our Missionary Societies would learn how the Gospel is to be propagated, let them take a lesson from the Culdees of Scotland. For want of the use of her retrospective eyes the church in these days is so lifted up with self-conceit, and so prone to fall into every heresy which any one may broach. For example, the Evangelicals are as ready at this moment to take up with the heresy, that Christ had a different body from the rest of men, as if it had not been condemned in almost a hundred forms; and so also will the comparatively modern error, that the death of Christ had respect only to the elect portion of mankind. There is an unlearnedness in these times, which cannot be sufficiently blamed: some can go back to the Puritans, and some to the Reformers; but to the great body, both of the clergy and the laity, what went before is lost in the one dark cloud of Papal error. Church History is a high and noble study, to which every instructor of the people is bound to apply himself; not in the way of knowing the mere events and occurrences, but the spirit of the writings of the time, the spirit of the error, and the Spirit of the truth; for if it be true, as we have said above, that the eyes in the wheels signify a spirituality in every revolution of the providence of God, we have not studied any revolution or event until we see the spiritual causes from which it proceeded, and the spiritual ends which it served. They speak much of the philosophy of history, and pride themselves in having surpassed the ancients in this thing. I set little store by our attainments