XV.

DISC. mighty empires successively rifing and difappearing again, like so many waves in this great and wide sea, where, exalted for a little season to the highest pitch of grandeur, they glitter in the sunshine of profperity, till they are overwhelmed and absorbed by the growing power of fome neighbouring people, who themselves are scarcely gazed at, before they depart and give way to others, as others did to them, we are led thereby to admire and adore the providence of him who ruleth in the kingdoms of men, who putteth down one and setteth up another, ordering all things according to the counsel of his own will. But when from the Scriptures of truth we learn what the counsel of that will is, and how gracious an aspect it bears towards the servants of the true GoD; when we fee all things, even the most untractable, working together for good to them that believe, and the powers of the earth made subservient to the kingdom of the Meffiah, in carrying on the divine dispensations of mercy and judgment towards the church, as her obedience pleads

pleads for the one, or her tranfgreffions call DISC. for the other, how are our hearts filled and

warmed with a sense of his goodness, who makes the world and all the persons and things in it conspire to promote the felicity of his chofen, who governs the universe as head of his church, who loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob!

It shall be my endeavour, in the following discourse, to set before you a succinct view of the divine economy in the government of the world, confidered in this light, viz. as relative to the affairs of the church. The mercies we this day commemorate will close an induction of particulars, and the use we are to make of them be the na tural and obvious result of the whole.

But shall we not be faid to aggrandize the church, to think of her more highly than we ought to think, when we thus represent the kings of the earth as ministering unto her, and put all things as it were under her feet? This may be said. But

it

DISC. it will be faid by none who have duly weighed the difference between things temporal and things eternal, and have learned to give the preference where it is so evidently due. The commission of political government extends no farther than this world. Every man's death diffolves his relation to an earthly kingdom, and all civil distinctions drop into the dust together. But, as says the Apostle, ημων πολιτευμα, " our citizenship is in heaven," from whence St. John faw the Christian Church, " that "holy city, the new Jerufalem, descend," and whither she will again be received up, nay, whither she is continually ascending, the triumphant part of her, as well as her all-glorious head, being there already. Hence it is, that the church even upon earth is styled "the kingdom of God;" the spirits departed and the faithful who remain being alike the subjects of it, and together making up what the Apostle calls the whole family of heaven and earth named after Christ; who, as he now ratifies in heaven the sentence of the church when

XV.

when justly inflicted on earth, so will he DISC. one day enable her to "execute judgment" on the angels as well as on this world, seeing her head is Lord of them all. They are not "members of his body, of his flesh, " and of his bones; for he took not on him "the nature of angels, but he took on him "the feed of Abraham;" to whom they are "all ministering spirits, sent forth to "minister to them who," through the faith of their father Abraham, " are heirs "of falvation." What wonder then that we find these exceeding great and precious promises made to the church, with relation to the kingdoms of the earth :-" Kings "shall be thy nursing fathers, and queens "thy nurfing mothers; they shall bow "down to thee with their face towards the " earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet. "The fons also of them that afflicted thee " shall come bending unto thee, and all "they that despised thee shall bow them" selves down at the soles of thy feet, and " they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the

"Zion of the holy one of Ifrael. Therefore " thy

DISC. " thy gates shall be open continually; they

xv.

" shall not be shut day nor night, that men may bring unto thee the forces of the "Gentiles, and that their kings may be "brought: for the nation and kingdom " that will not ferve thee shall perish; yea, "those nations shall be utterly wasted." Thus glorious are the things spoken of thee, thou city of GOD. May we not then take up our parable like Balaam, and saySurely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination againft Ifrael. How shall we degrade her, whom God hath fo highly exalted? How shall we lightly esteem her, whom the King of heaven thus delighteth to honour? We cannot do it, until we have forgotten who it was that died to redeem her.

Let none therefore be offended, but rather let all greatly rejoice, and glorify GOD on this behalf, when they find the affairs of the kingdoms and empires of the earth directed and disposed by an unseen hand in fuch a manner as may best comport with her