ON HOSEA XIV.- VERSES 5--7. 197 confounded, or by failing in his confidence be any way disappointed and put to shame, Eph. ii. 20, 21. 1 Pet, ii. 6. This is the difference between the righteousness of creation, and the righteousness of redemption ; the state of the world in Adam, and the state of the church in Christ. Adam had his righteousness in his own keeping, and therefore when the power of hell set upon him, he fell from his stedfastness ; there was no promise given unto him that the gates of hell should not prevail against him ; being of an earthly consti- tution, he had corruptibility, mutability, infirmity be- longing unto him out of the principles of his being. But Christ the second Adam is the Lord from heaven ; over whom death hath no claim nor power ; and the righteousness and stability of the church is founded, and hath its original in him. The powers of darkness must be able to evacuate the virtue of his sacrifice, to stop God's ears unto his intercession, to repel and keep back the supply and influences of his Spirit, to keep or recover possession against his ejectment, in one word. to kill him again, and to thrust him away from the right hand of the Majesty on High, before ever they can blow down or overturn his church. As Plato compared a man, so may we the church unto a tree inverted, with the root above and the branches below. And the root of the tree doth not only serve to give life to the branches while they abide in it, but to hold them fast that none can be able to cut them off, John x. 28, 29. [3.] The growth and spreading abroad the branches of the church, is from him whose name is the Branch, Isa. xi. 11. Zech. iii. 8. Unto him are all the ends of the earth given for a possession, and all the king- doms of the world are to be the Lord's and his Christ's. In regard of his dispensation towards Israel, God's R3
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