have descended from Abraham, and yet the land of Uz, where he dwelt, did certainly belong to the Edomites.

The great Redeemer, still attentive to the faith of Abraham's posterity, as the angel or messenger of his Father, but in the appearance of a man, met Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, at Peniel, Gen. xxxii. and suffering himself to be prevailed with in wrestling, changed his name from Jacob to Israel, for as a prince he had power with God and with men.' On which, without that reproof, which the apostle John received when he was about to worship a mere angel, Rev. xxii. 9, See thou do it not,' he was adored by this patriarch, who said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.' Either therefore this act of worship was an innocent idolatry (than which nothing more absurd can be supposed) or the being worshipped was God, and appearing as a man, must have been the Redeemer of mankind. As from this Israel was to descend a great and numerous people, and the Redeemer himself; as many troubles and great trials were to fall upon him from his sons, and the yet unsettled state of his family, in a country where he was still but a sojourner; the extraordinary encouragement, abovementioned and afforded, was by the good God judged requisite, for after all, when he was very old, he declared, that 'few and evil had been his days.'

In the book of Job, one of the most ancient in the world, and always in the hands of the Israelites, as a part of their most sacred Scriptures, we find the friends of this righteous man violently insisting on an argument held by all our present infidels, namely, that virtue is its own sufficient reward, and vice its own full punishment, in this life. In consequence of this false principle, they consider all the afflictions of this good man as punishments justly due from God for the wicked and hypocritical life, which they take it for granted, he had led. In answer to these upbraidings, Job is often provoked to justify himself as a good man, and sometimes to shew too great a dependence on his own righteousness; and appeals to the justice of God, before which no man can stand, so as in the bitterness of his soul, even to challenge his Maker to an argument on the subject of his innocence. Thus, as is usual in such cases, the dispute is carried to extremes on both sides. The good man, however,

towards the latter end of the 19th chapter, seems more soberly to recollect himself, and to declare a dependence on his Redeemer, who, he believes, will at the last day, deliver him out of his afflictions, raise him up to life, though his reins' were then, or soon to be by death, consumed within him.' This faith in the Lord as his justifier and redeemer makes good his plea, and ought to have silenced his accusers, though, like other infidel disputants, they go on to rail and argue. In my humble opinion, the three verses I refer to, should be taken as the best key to this most admirable book, and to the important argument handled by Job and his untoward comforters. On both sides, a thousand excellent things are said, excellent I mean in themselves, but not always applicable to the clearing up of the point in question. As in almost all disputes among men, so in this, truth and error are intermixed on both sides. In this life the bad man is often permitted to prosper, for a trial of our faith; and is sometimes punished, for an example to others. In this life also Providence sometimes prospers a much better man, for our encouragement, and frequently suffers him to be afflicted, that he, and such men, may learn to place their hopes in a better life. But, as all men, even the best of men, are concluded under sin,' so properly and truly speaking, no man hath reason to look for a reward in either world, merely on account of his own righteousness, but on the imputed righteousness of Christ alone. When therefore he is made happy, his happiness is called a reward, not in the strict sense of the word, because it is the effect of that faith, which God hath given him, and those good works, which he hath enabled him to perform. For this reason, taking the argument, as the friends of Job here take it, in the lump, and as Job himself seems in some measure to take it, the dispute can never be ended by man, nor Job's amazement at his own miseries, ended, but by God himself, who in the Christian religion hath fully cleared up the confusion on both sides; but here by a display of his majesty, hath imposed silence on both parties, as men who did but darken counsel by words without knowledge.' As Job however had by faith put his trust in the great Redeemer, that Redeemer rebukes the mistaken severity of his uncharitable accusers, and in their sight restores him to a happier

condition, even in this life, than he had been deprived of by the malice of the devil; a malice, which, as far as he hath been permitted, he hath discharged on Christ himself, and on all the faithful servants of Christ.

Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, was by the cruelty of his brothers, but overruled by divine providence, sent into Egypt, the then most populous and knowing country in the world, to save that country, and the neighbouring nations, from a famine, which otherwise must have proved the ruin of them all. This he did by that foresight into futurity, and that extraordinary wisdom, wherewith God had endowed him. Here you see a kind of redeemer, already commissioned to save.

On his account an invitation was given by the king of Egypt to his father Jacob, and all his family, to come into that country, and live on the provision made for them by Joseph; and here Jacob dying, prophesied, that the posterity of his son Judah should not finally cease to possess some share of political power, till Shiloh, peace, that is, the Prince of Peace, or the great Redeemer, should come.

In this country the descendants of Jacob, who came only in number sixty-six males, lived separate from the Egyptians, who hated them because they were shepherds, in the land of Goshen, a particular province of Egypt, until they were increased to the number of six hundred thousand, at which time they were barbarously oppressed by the then king of Egypt.

There it was that God sent Moses to deliver them out of their bondage. But the Egyptian tyrant would not suffer them to depart until he and his wicked people had been repeatedly terrified with a number of dreadful plagues, in a most miraculous manner inflicted on them, through the ministry of Moses, by the immediate hand of God. By these at length, the tyrant, forced to consent, permitted them to leave the country. No sooner, however, had they set out on their journey, than he, a monster of folly and infidelity, recovering from his fright, pursued them with all his forces, and hemmed them in between his army behind, and the sea before them. Now it was that God stood between his people and their enemies, and Moses by his command, having struck the sea with his rod, the waters fell back on each

hand, and stood like a wall' on the right and left, whereby a dry and safe passage was laid open to his people. They entered, and arrived on the farther shore. The tyrant and his Egyptians followed, but the sea then returned to its strength,' and overwhelmed them all. This the surviving Egyptians saw from their side of the sea. This the Hebrews saw from the other, and Moses recorded it in writing, witnessed by both nations. From this, their journey to the good land, which God had promised them through their ancestors Abraham, &c., and now again through Moses, lay their way along a dry and barren wilderness, where food and water were seldom to be found. This people appear to have almost wholly forgotten their God, during their long captivity in Egypt, and in consequence of that forgetfulness, notwithstanding the gracious and miraculous deliverance, which he had so lately afforded them, were with the greatest difficulty brought to a very small degree of faith in his power, or of reliance on his goodness. Pride and the love of pleasure, those original sins of the devil, and their first parents, held them in a state of bondage, worse than that of Egypt. Their pride taught them to rebel, and was not half humbled by the opening of the earth, and the swallowing up of a multitude, whom no miracles could convince or soften. And the love of pleasure did but raise in these slaves of appetite, a wish to return to the flesh-pots of Egypt,' though to all the hardships of their former bondage. The rocks were cloven to supply them with water. Showers of quails, the most delicious of all wild fowl, and showers of angels' food, were poured on them from heaven; and yet they disbelieved and murmured. When they came to countries inhabited, they had enemies more numerous and powerful than themselves to fight with, whom God nevertheless delivered into their hands, as people still more corrupt and wicked than themselves. They were doubters, but these were idolators. They were murmurers, these were plunged in vices contrary to nature. How in this piece of history is the stubbornness of mankind, and the patience of God exemplified! The following part of their history may serve to set both in yet a stronger light. Did not God, you will be apt to cry out, foresee the infidelity and hardened temper of this people? Why then did he choose them for his peculiar?

It is not common sense that starts this latter question, because it ought to know, that perhaps a better could not be found. Do the people of these countries, and at these times, by their sense of religion, recommend themselves better to such a choice? God did perfectly foresee the temper of these Hebrews, and declared to them, that he did not choose them for their goodness or righteousness.' Nay, it may yet appear probable, before we have done, that he chose them because he foreknew them to be a most stiffnecked and ungovernable race. Let us wave this for the present, and observe, that God gave these people in writing by the pen of Moses, a law, by far more excellent, than had been ever given by any other lawgiver, yet purposely loaded it with so many ceremonies and rites, as made it more difficult to be kept in practice than any other law, not improbably because they were so stubborn a people, and because they were to be widely distinguished from all other people, and wholly estranged from the rites and usages of their idolatrous neighbours. The prodigious number and frequency of their sacrifices makes a considerable part of the burden laid on them, but was appointed with a farther and higher view. In these were recalled to human attention the animal sacrifices, appointed from the fall of man, and through them the great and only effectual sacrifice, whereof they were types and shadows, for, of themselves, they neither had, nor could have, any power to atone for sin. The paschal lamb and the scape-goat were peculiarly intended to represent, beforehand, and apply the real atonement to be made by the blood of Christ Jesus for the sins of all men. This whole law, as St. Paul observes, but more especially the sacrifices, was intended as a school-master' to bring the Jews to Christ;' and, with all possible submission, I add, the Jews were intended, as school-masters, to bring the Gentiles to Christ. For the still higher confirmation of faith, among the Hebrews, and also among the Gentiles, in the expected Redeemer, that Redeemer repeatedly shewed himself to Moses, in the Wilderness, conversed with him, shewed him his back-parts,' Exod. xxxiii. 23, nay, 'spake to him face to face,' Exod. xxxiii. 11, called himself the I AM,' Exod. iii. 14, as he did afterward to the Jews, John viii. 58, and to his apostles, Matt. xxviii. 20, by which