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the supreme dominion and infinite wisdom of God? Such are the lessons taught in the book of Job. In conformity with that dispensation, we see this holy man's faith crowned with temporal prosperity: but yet the people of God are taught what is the virtue of afflictions, and to taste that grace that was to be connected with the cross.

Moses had tasted it when he preferred the affliction and shame he was to endure with this people, to the pleasures and abundance of the house of the king of Egyptt. From that time God made him taste the reproaches of JESUS CHRIST. He tasted them still more in his precipitate flight, and in his forty years exile t. But he drank deep of the cup of JESUS CHRIST, when being chosen to deliver that people, he had to bear with their continual revolts, in which his life was in danger. He learned what it costs to save the children of God, and shewed afar off what a higher deliverance was one day to cost the Saviour of the world.

That great man had not even the consolation of entering the promised land: he beheld it only from the top of a mountain, and was not ashamed to record, that he was excluded from it by a sin, which, slight as it appears, deserved to be thus severely punished in a man of such eminent grace §. Moses was an example of the severe jealousy of God, and of the judgment

*Job xiii. 15. xiv. 14, 15. xvi. 21. xix. 25, &c. + Exod. ii. 10, 11, 15. Heb. xi. 24, 25, 26. Numb. xiv. 10. § Ibid. xx. 12, 13. xxvii. 14. Deut. xxxii. 51, 52.

he inflicts with such awful exactness upon those, whom his gifts have bound to a more perfect fidelity.

But a higher mystery is set forth to us in the exclusion of Moses. This wise lawgiver, who, by so many wonders, only conducts the children of God into the neighbourhood of their land, is himself a proof to us, that his law made nothing perfect*, and that without being able to give us the accomplishment of the promises, it makes us embrace them afar off†, or conducts us at most, as it were, to the entrance of our inheritance. It is a Joshua, it is a Jesus, for this was the true name of Joshua, who by that name and by his office, represented the Saviour of the world; it is that man so far inferior to Moses in every thing, and only superior to him by the name he bears; it is he, I say, who is to bring the people of. God into the holy land.

By the victories of that great man, before whom Jordan turns back, the walls of Jericho fall down of themselves, and the sun stands still in the midst of heaven, God establishes his children in the land of Canaan, from whence he by the same means drives out the abominable nations. By the hatred he gave his faithful people towards them, he inspired them with an extreme abhorrence of their impiety; the punishment he inflicted on them by their means, filled them with an awe of the divine justice, the decrees of which they were executing. One Heb. vii. 19. † Ibid, xi. 13. Procop. lib. ii. de bel. Vand.

part of those people, whom Joshua expelled from their land, settled in Africa, where long after, was found, in an ancient inscription, the monument of their flight, and of the victories of Joshua. After those miraculous victories had put the Israelites in possession of the greatest part of the land promised to their fathers, Joshua, and Eleazer the high-priest, with the heads of the twelve tribes, made a division of it among them, according to the law of Moses, and assigned to the tribe of Judah the first and greatest lot*. From the time of Moses, it had surpassed the others in number, in courage, and in dignity. Joshua died and the people continued the conquest of the holy land. God chose the tribe of Judah should march at the head, and declared that he had delivered the country into its hands. Accordingly, that tribe defeated the Canaanites, and took Jerusalem, which was to be the holy city, and the capital of the people of God. This was the ancient Salem, where Melchizedek had reigned in the days of Abraham, Melchizedek, that king of righteousness †, (for so his name imports) and at the same time king of peace, for Salem signifies peace, whom Abraham had acknowledged as the greatest priest in the world, as if Jerusalem had from henceforth been destined to be a holy city, and the

* Jos. xiii. xiv. & foll. Numb. xxvi. 53. xxxiv. 17. Jos. xiv. xv. Numb. ii. 3, 9. vii. 12. x. 14. 1 Chron. v. 2. Jud. i, 1, 2. Ibid. iv. 8. + Heb. vii. P

fountain of religion*. That city was given at first to the children of Benjamin, who being weak, and few in number, were not able to drive out the Jebusites, the ancient inhabitants of the country, and so dwelt among them. Under the Judges, the people of God are variously treated, according as they do good or evil. After the death of the old men, who had seen the miracles of God's hand, the memory of those great works decays, and the universal propensity of mankind draws away the people to idolatry. As often as they fall into it, they are punished; as often as they repent, they are delivered. The belief of a Providence, and the truth of the promises and threatenings of Moses are more and more confirmed in the hearts of true believers. But God prepared still greater examples of it. The people demanded a king, and God gave them Saul, who was soon rejected for his sins; he resolved at last to establish a royal family, from which the Messiah should spring, and this he chose out of Judah t. David, a young shepherd, sprung from that tribe, the youngest of the sons of Jesse, whose father and family were unacquainted with his merit, but whom God found after his own heart, was consecrated by Samuel, in Bethlehem, his native city.

IV. David, the Kings, and the Prophets. HERE the people of God assume a more august form. The kingdom is established +1 Sam. xvi.

⚫ Jud. i. 21.

in the house of David. This house begins with two kings of different characters, but admirable both. David, a man of war, and a conqueror, subdues the enemies of the people of God, whose arms he causes to be feared over all the East; and Solomon, renowned for his wisdom both at home and abroad, renders that people happy by a profound peace. But the progress of religion requires of us here some particular remarks upon the lives of these two great kings.

David reigned first over Judah, powerful and victorious, and he was afterwards acknowledged by all Israel*. He took from the Jebusites the strong-hold of Sion, which was the citadel of Jerusalem†. Master of that city, he established there, by the command of God, the seat of the kingdom and of religion. Sion was his dwelling-place: he built it round about, and named it the city of David ‡. Joab, his sister's son, built the rest of the city, and Jerusalem took a new form. The men of Judah possessed the whole country, and Benjamin, few in number, dwelt intermixed with them.

The ark of the covenant built by Moses, where God dwelt between the cherubims, and where the two tables of the decalogue were kept, had no fixed place. David brought it in triumph into Sion, which he had conquered by the Almighty help of God, that so God might reign in Sion ;

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2 Sam. v. 6, 7, 8, 9.
1 Chron. ii. 16.

+ Chron. xi. 6, 7. 8.

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