that of those who are taken by the hand to follow their deliverer and to flee from the wrath to come (which is another allusion to the same event) some shall turn back in their hearts and affections toward this wicked world, and so be unfit for the kingdom of God: a circumstance which should be thought upon with fear and trembling: for consider how that unbelieving soul, by favouring what was evil, lost all that was good, when it was in her power to escape; as they will not fail to do, who either disbelieve God's judgment upon the world, or think the world undeserving of it, and so take part with the wicked against the justice of God. When times and places are evil, and wickedness prevails with a high hand, the universality, and power of corruption is dreadful -to think of. When the world was drowned, few that is, eight Souls only were saved in the ark; and when Sodom was overthrown, a small remnant only were delivered whence we are to expect, that as it was in the days of Lot, so shall it be in the day when the son of Man is revealed: confidence in this word and insolent disregard of truth and godliness shall gene rally prevail, and few indeed shall be left to receive him and escape with him when this Sodom wherein we now live shall be visited. From a likeness of character in the Jewish people when they became abominable in their sins, the name of Sodom is given to their city, and they are threatened with the same fate. Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of Sodom, give ear unto the law of our God ye people of Gomorrah; saith the prophet Isaiah*. The prophet's message is to Judah and Jerusalem; the rulers and people of which being fallen into great Chap. i. 10. corruption, and strengthening themselves in their wickedness, are addressed by the prophet as the rulers and the people of the abominable Sodom; and he pronounces that they would have met with the judgment of Sodom, but for the sake of the faithful who were still left amongst them, such as Abraham hoped to find when he interceded for Sodom: except the Lord of Hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah*, that is, as like unto them in their punishment as they were in their manners. And now we shall see the reason why the Evangelist in the book of Revelation speaks of a great city, which spiritually is called Egypt and Sodom, where our Lord was crucified; for certainly our Lord was crucified at Jerusalem, and Jerusalem for its apostacy and the judgment that was to overtake it, is called by these names in the prophets: though the passage as it stands in the Revelation may be extended from the example of Jerusalem to the world at large. I pass over the allegorical history of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, the bond-woman and the free, because it hath been so fully commented upon by the apostle as a figure of the Jewish and Christian covenants. I cannot add to his explanation; and as · I should be unwilling to contract it, I rather chuse to refer you to the consideration of it, as it stands in the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Galatians; and shall proceed to the deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, which is one of the most interesting and edifying histories of scripture; as it gives us an example of all the dangers, temptations and deliverances that Isaiah i. 9. can happen in the life of man, during his progress and pilgrimage through the wilderness of this present world. For, in the first place, the translation of the church from Egypt to Canaan is applied in all its circumstances as a pattern of the translation of us Christians from the bondage of sin, to the enjoyment of our freedom in the kingdom of Christ. Out of Egypt, saith God by the prophet, have I called my son*: a declaration which is as truly verified in every child of God at this day, as when Israel was delivered from Pharaoh, and when the infant Jesus was brought back in safety from Egypt to his own kingdom and people. Thus the redemption of the people of God from Egypt as a sign of a greater and more universal redemption, is a doctrine with which few readers of the scripture can be unacquainted. The prophets warned the people not to rest in the redemption that was past, but to look for another, and that so much more excellent in its nature, that the former should in a manner be forgotten in comparison of it: Remember not the former thing, neither consider the hings of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, saith the Lord, I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert t. He promised also in one of the psalms, that he would bring his own people again from the depths of the sea; which can signify nothing but that universal redemption from sin and death in which all the nations of the world have an equal interest: because this Psalm is not addressed to the Jews, but to all the kingdoms of the earth; and is applied by the apostle to the victory of Jesus Christ over death, and to the miraculous gifts bestowed on the first preachers of the gospel*: so there can be no doubt as to the intention of the expression in question it must have the same signification in figure as is expressed in the letter at v. 20.-to the Lord our God belong the issues from death. But the figurative application of the history of the Exodus is much plainer in the new testament. There we see Zacharias, in his prophetical hymn on occasion of the birth of John Baptist, celebrating the blessings of the Christian redemption in terms borrowed from the past redemption of Israel out of Egyptt. God is said to have visited and redeemed his people by raising up a Saviour in the house of David-to have performed the mercy promised to the fathers, which in the letter of it related to the deliverance from Egypt-to have saved us out of the hands of our enemies, that we might serve him without fear, as the Hebrews did, when they were no longer under the power of Pharaoh--and finally to guide our feet into the way of peace, as he had before guided his people to a peaceable settlement in the land of Canaan. If we consider the history of the Exodus more particularly as an example of the circumstances of our redemption by Jesus Christ; the first thing that offers itself is the miserable servitude of the Hebrews under Pharaoh. Such is the natural state of every man who is born a sojourner in the Egypt of this world. As they laboured in clay and mortar, so is every man by nature the slave of vile and earthly affections. As the Hebrews were under Pharaoh, man is under Satan, the proud enemy of the true God, and the irreconciliable and merciless persecutor of • Compare Psalm lxviii. 18. and Ephesians iv. 8. his church. From this miserable state, Christ as the messenger and minister of God is sent from heaven to deliver man, as Moses was raised up for a like purpose, and sent to lead the people out of Egypt; of whose office we shall have a farther prospect when we come to the second sort of historical figures. Look at the order of the redemption from Egypt, and you will find it agree in every particular with the order of the Christian salvation. The people were conducted to the waters of the red sea, where the apostle instructs us they were all baptised unto Moses*: they were all saved by water, as the family of Noah had before been saved at the flood, and as we are saved now. It doth not appear to us how they could have been saved from Pharaoh, but by the interposition of the waters of the sea. Here their salvation began, and the power of their adversary ended and we know that Satan has not that sovereignty over baptized Christians as he has over men in the state of nature. After baptism a Christian iş no longer the subject of that Tyrant, but the child of God, who undertakes thenceforth to conduct him through all the trials and dangers of this life to the inheritance promised to the fathers. We see how man is to be supported in this life, and to what dangers he is exposed in the way of his salvation, if we observe what happened to the Hebrews in their way through the wilderness. No temptation befalls us but such as is common to man, and of which their case gives us an example. The things which befell them are not only apposite and applicable to our own case, but St. Paul affirms they were purposely ordained by the providence of God to answer this very end: Now all these things happened |