bondage; and, like the foolish Galatians, it is bewitched with the slavery of carnal ordinances, from which Christ hath made us free. In looking attentively at ecclesiastical history, one would imagine that the world had been carefully endeavouring, ever since the death of Christ, to restore the law of Moses, with additional burthens, and a still direr bondage. Every thing that the law commanded, excepting the sacrifice of animals, has been retained, and worse has been added thereto; and men love to have it so, and they delight in this secular filth, and take great pleasure in "the statutes which are not good, and the judgments whereby men cannot live," Ezek. xx. 25. The spiritual and mystical body of Christ is to them an impalpable ghost,a phantom of enthusiasts never to be laid hold of: their gross senses must have gross food, they must have idols of their own making, and Teraphim hammered at their own anvils. Like the stubborn Israelites, they prefer the similitude of a calf that eateth hay, to the invisible and spiritual "Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world:" "for the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." When, therefore, you talk to the natural man of the beauty of God's spiritual temple, and the exceeding great glory of the free Jerusalem, his heart is hardened like a stone; there is a veil of legal blindness over his eyes; and he, being hoodwinked with a carnal film of pride, crieth out, that these glories are all fancy; that for his part he does not believe they exist, for he cannot see them; just as an owl, in broad blaze of the meridian sun, can discover nothing but darkness, and hooteth against the lovely light of day. The natural man does not understand even what the church is; and it is astonishing what a degree of ignorance prevails on this important subject: for though the church of England, in its nineteenth article, has well declared the truth, by defining "the visible church of Christ to be a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same;"-yet the world, in general, looketh upon the church as a corporation of priests set apart to perform ceremonies in an ancient edifice; so that both the priests and the edifice are in their idea requisite to make their definition complete; and if either the one or the other be wanting, then is the church wanting of perfection. This, I say, is the prevailing opinion of all ignorant persons; and many a book, and many a tract, is published in these days, with the authority of weighty names, to persuade men of this falsehood, to turn men away from the spiritual temple of the free Jerusalem, and to entangle them again in that yoke of bondage which did so bewitch the foolish Galatians. O that this enchanter's rod could be broken, and thrown into the depths of the sea! But, alas! as long as man is born in sins, with corrupt inclinations and beastly affections, (and all of us are so born,) so long must this witchcraft have power over the minds of all people, nations, and languages. But they that are born from above, they that are sons of the free Jerusalem, which is above, and is the mother of all the regenerate, they that have entered into the spiritual church, and become members of Christ's body; their eyes are opened, they see the ugliness of these idols which they did once so greatly admire; and, having their hearts warmed with a love of God, and their eyes illuminated with the bright light of the gospel illuminations, they look up to Christ only as the Head of their church, and can find the church nowhere but in the assemblies of faithful Christians, who meet to strengthen their union with their Head, by prayers for fresh supplies of grace and love. Neither priest nor ancient edifice are requisite for the true church: the free Jerusalem emancipates men from this slavery; she setteth her children under the canopy of heaven, and says, "Behold the temple of your God;" a temple more ancient, more sublime, more venerable, and more holy, than any of the perishable structures of the hands of man: the sacrifice that she prepares is the Lamb of God, slain before the foundations of the world; and the priests whom she marshals to officiate at the high and solemn mysteries of faith, are all the elect people of God; all the faithful Christians, men and women, who worship God in the Spirit, who "rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.” To this majestic worship, all the angels of God are attendant ministers; they are busily employed in carrying messages from the throne of grace, and in keeping beyond the precincts of the spiritual enclosure, all that is impure, and all that are not robed in the marriage garments. All the furniture of this temple is clean, and pure, and comely. What is the altar* whereon our sacrifices of prayer and praises are offered to the Almighty, but a contrite heart, throbbing with the blood of Christ? What the golden candlesticks, but the illumined understanding, wherein the light of the knowledge of God, and his divine will, shineth for ever? What the tables of shew bread, but the sanctified memory, which keepeth the bread of life continually? Yes, if we should presume so far as to enter into the very closet of God's oracle; even there, O God, do we find our * Bishop Hall. unworthy hearts so honoured by thee, that they are made the very ark wherein the royal law, and the pot of the heavenly manna, is kept for ever; and from whose propitiatory, shaded with the wings of thy glorious angels, thou givest thy gracious testimonies of thy good Spirit witnessing with ours, that we are the children of the living God. Who, then, that has a heart alive to the excellencies of the spiritual church, would thrust his neck again into the yoke of bondage, prepared at the workshop of carnal and gross-souled lovers of the law? Who, that has lifted up his mind into the heaven of heavens, and has been carried on the wings of the Spirit of God, to talk with the Head of his church at the right hand of Jehovah,—that has held high converse with all the pure and lovely spirits in heaven,—that by faith has seen him that is invisible,—that by faith has gone boldly to the throne of grace that he might obtain mercy,—that by faith has trampled this world under his feet, that by faith has fought with the two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit,-that by faith has become incorporated in Christ's body;-who, thus exalted, sublimed, and purified, could endure to return to the weak and beggarly elements of a secular religion; and, renouncing the liberties of the free Jerusalem, sit down by the fleshpots of Egypt, a slave in heart, and an apostate in practice? Let the poets sing as they list of the grandeur of earthen temples, let them rehearse the solemnities of organs, and litanies, and pealing anthems,— let them love to walk through gloomy aisles and sombre transepts,— and let them feast their eyes with the comely proportions of arched pillars and fretted roofs;-but, remember, yes, my Christian brethren, remember, the veil of the temple has been rent in twain; and through that dire rent, all the retinue of legal pomp, all the service of secular ordinances, all the company of priests and Levites, all the visible show and grandeur of earthly worship, has been thrust o t into the pit of oblivion and though the world has been busily employed for eighteen centuries in fishing up these filthy treasures out of the great deep, and in setting them up again in Christ's clean church; yet now I do believe that the ark of the true covenant is entering in his church, and that the great Dagon will fall down flat on his face, and never be raised up again for ever. When Jerusalem was besieged with Roman armies, and when it was reduced to the last extremities, a voice was heard from the temple, a few days before the city was taken, crying out, with supernatural loudness, "Let us depart hence!" and when those words were uttered, all the doorposts and pillars of the temple shook, as in an earthquake. Who was it, think ye, that cried out, "Let us depart hence?" It was the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; it was the whole company of ministering angels, who, having waited to the last moment to fill up the cup of wrath for adulterous Zion, left it to the utter extermination and irretrievable ruin of fire and sword. And whither did they depart? They went to the Jerusalem which is above, and is free; they went to the espousals of the chaste bride, the king's daughter that is all glorious within, the virgin that has neither spot nor wrinkle, but is holy and without blemish; they went to celebrate her wedlock with Christ: and since that time she has been a fruitful wife, and has brought forth all the children of God, and is the mother of all the elect. And she will still present children to her spouse, till the day of judgment: for all that are born from above issue from her womb, and are fed at her breasts with the sincere milk of the word. Therefore it was written of old time, of this our mother, ages before she was married to Christ, and when she was despised and unknown, "Rejoice, thou barren that bearest not; break forth into singing, thou that travailest not; for the desolate hath many more children than she which hath an husband," Gal. iv. 27. Let all, then, who are born of the free Jerusalem, remember their high birth and the privileges of their house; and let them, above all things, call to mind that they "are not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God;"—that, being the sons of God, they have a constant right to come into the presence of their heavenly Father, and the courts of the supreme King, by the introduction of their Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, the righteous;- that he is the one Mediator and Intercessor for the elect, and that no one but he can be their mediator, or offer up their prayers to God for them ;-that if they faint at the idea of Jehovah's magnificence, and their own unworthiness, they are clothed in the garments of Christ's righteousness, and are, therefore, precious in the eyes of the King; and that if their spirits sink in delivering their petitions, the Spirit of God maketh intercession for them with groanings that cannot be uttered; and that the answer of prayers is a covenant privilege; it is not a monopoly given to one or two, but a charter granted to the whole corporation of saints to the end of the world. With these thoughts, let them be comforted; and let no one cheat them of their freedom; for they are freemen of the city where Christ dwells; "and where the Spirit of Christ is, there is liberty." On this charter they must make their stand; for the Scriptures have declared it to be "the perfect law of liberty," and that whosoever continueth therein, that man shall be blessed in his deed, James i. 25; for it has released them from the traditions of men, and the base bondage of will-worship, and is "the law also of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which hath made them free from the law of sin and death," Rom. viii. 2. And in this respect, pride of birth and family is praiseworthy; for they who are sons of Jerusalem, which is above, and free, and the mother of all the faithful, are so high-born, and so illustrious, that they must needs take precedence of all the world. David, who had studied their genealogy, and who wrote the marriage hymn of their mother in the forty-fifth Psalm, whom he addresses as "the king's daughter all glorious within," says to her, in prophetical promise, "Instead of thy fathers, shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth." Mark the word-" all the earth:" not in any favoured spot; not in any particular holy land; not in any privileged district; not in any little Goshen, with a little sun of its own ;-but in all the earth, wherever the beams of the Sun of Righteousness can reach; and they do reach everywhere. The meanest, the basest, the most abject of men, the poorest, the plainest, the humblest, are all capable of enjoying the privileges of the holy city, if they can trace their line through the regeneration up to God. Let, therefore, no worldly sophister complain, (and yet many do complain,) that the poor and low-born press into the kingdom of God: for to the poor is the gospel preached, to the poor the privileges of gospel liberty are thrown open, and God has chosen base things of the world to confound the mighty. Now the word "base " meaneth in the Greek, things without a pedigree or genealogy, (ra ayɛvn,) for it is the family of these persons, who, in the world's reckoning, have no high blood in them, that, in the eyes of God, is most noble and most illustrious when such become incorporated in the mystical body of Christ, and are born of his bride, the New Jerusalem, by the Spirit of regeneration, and the power of faith, then do they trace their pedigree through all the saints and martyrs, through all the seers and prophets of old, through all the holy kings and religious patriarchs of distant ages, up to God himself, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Let your weak knees then be strengthened, and your feeble hands be confirmed, ye poor Christians; for, though this world looketh on you as refuse and outcasts, yet your God looketh on you as princes and if men despise your origin, (for their blind eyes can never see a heavenly pedigree,) shew them your shield, of which the holy angels are the supporters, the bloody cross the device, the crown of righteousness the crest, and "Holiness to the Lord!" the : |