612 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. For they are not the favourites, or beloved of God, they are not his people. There were the natural branches of Abraham's family, or the visible church, who though they are of Israel, yet are not the true Israel ; Rom. ix. 6. These are the natural branches of the good olive-tree, who were broken of because of unbelief; Rom. Xi. 20, 21. and after the christian church was set up and established, they no more belonged to the visible church of God, as they did never at all belong to the invisible. X. And when the christian church was thus set up and established in the world, the nation of the Jews,-who were for the most part unbelievers in the Messiah, were cut off as á nation, from all appearance of God's visible church and people, by the destruction of their city and temple, and utter ruin of their state orcommonwealth. Thus their being cut off from the privileges of being his visible church, as he was their God, and, from being his visible subjects, as he was their king, considered as a public body and community, went hand in hand, as fast as human affairs could permit. The Jews were then, in a most notorious and visible mamrer, cast out of the favour and protection of their God and king, in the sight of the world, and abandoned of him ; and since they renounced the Son of God, who was appointed their king, and slew him, and thereby filled up. the measure of their iniquities, he also renounced them from being his subjects, or his kingdom : He sent thesword amongst them, for their de- struction, and the wrath of God carne upon them to the uttermost, as that text has been usually explained ; 1 Thess. ii. 14-16. and they havenot, so much as the face of a visible church or people of God remaining these sixteen hundred years. God has fulfilled his word, and cut them off according to his threatenings, from their relation to him as their God, nor are they any longer his people; they have left their names for a curse to his chosen people, that is, the gospel church madeup chiefly of Gentiles, who esteem the name of a Jew a reproach or a curse, and God has called his people, by another name, that is, christians, as he threatened so plainly by Isaiah, his prophet, chapter lxv. 15. Thesewere the children of the kingdom concerning whom our Saviour foretels, that they should not sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven, but should be cast out into outer darkness ; Mat. viii. 11, 12. XI. Those, among the Gentiles, who received the Mes- siah, and believed in him, who practised faith and repentance, come into the real spiritual privileges, of whichall the external glories of Judaism were types and figures ; even as the inwardly pious Jews of old had those spiritual blessings, which were typi- fied by their own outward peculiarities. The Gentile believers, who were naturally branches of the wild olive, are grafted into the good olive-tree; Rom. xi. 17, 18, They are the seed of
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