616 JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN CHDItCHG$. churches, use the word we, and rank themselves amongst them in their present state of faith And holiness ; so when they speakof their former state of corrupt nature, and before their conversion, they used the word we also, and rank them- selves with them, as having been in a state of corrupt nature as Well as the Gentiles, before their faith and repentance, though they were never Gentiles by nation, but Jews or Israelites. So Eph. ii. 1, 3. You hulk he quickened who were dead in tres- passes and sins, wherein, in time past, yte walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now rcorketh, in the children of disobedience; among whom, also, we all had our conversation, in timespast, in the lusts 'of our flesh,fulfilling the desires of theflesh and ofthe mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. Verse 5. When we were dead in sins, God bath quickened us together with Christ. Tit. iii. 3. We ourselves, also, were some- timesfoolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and plea- sures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another: which, by the way, the learned author of " Miscellanea Sacra," attributes particularly to 'St. Paul himself, in his unconverted state, volume Ih. page 63. See the same characters applied to St. Paul, by the learned author of the paraphrase and notes on the epistle to Titus ; but I ask leave to include 'Titus and other Gentile christians in the word we, and not confine it merely to the apostle himself, as that author does. The words hateful, and hating one another, axxnxas, must imply mutual and reciprocal action, which is sufficient to prove, that St. Paul includes others, together withhimself, in these vile characters. St. Peter ex- presses himself in the samemanner, when be was writing to the Converted Gentiles. 1 Pet. iv. 3. " The time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, ban- quetings, and abominable idolatries." It is true, indeed, that Peter and Paul could not apply all these expressions personally to themselves in a state of nature and unconversion, in the same literal sense in which they might be applied to the Gentile christians,'in their unconverted state; but the apostles themselves, and the best of christians were, by nature, such sort of sinners as might be figured out by these literal characters of the Gentiles ; as living too much without God, giving themselves up to their lusts and the idols of their heart, and to the course of a sinful world, and the temptations of the devil, so that they were, inwardly, and really in the sight of God, such sort of sinful creatures, in a state of corrupt na- ture, in a spiritual sense, as the Gentiles were, in more visible outward appearance and practice : It is in this respect the hea- aliens, as 1 said before, were figures or embleilis of all the tmcon-
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