020 JEWISII AND CHRISTIAN CHURCHES. living God. Which scriptures may be very appositely andpro- perly applied to encourage the worst of sinners to come God, by the gospel of Christ, even those that are, as it were, in the ends of the earth, afar off from any relation to God, or his people. RECAPITULATION.The sum and design of these propositi- ons may be thus represented in short. There are but two sorts of persons in the world, saints and sinners, the holy and the unholy. The Jews and gentiles stand in scripture as figures or emblems of these two sorts, that is, of saints and sinners ; or of the invisible church of God, and of 'the wicked world ; the one, under the kingdom of God, the other, under the kingdom of Satan : For the visible church of God, in the Old Testament, was under its typical and shadowy administration ; and this visi- ble Jewish church, into which persons were admitted by being born of Israel, was a type of all that are really the subjects of God's kingdom of grace, being born of God ; whereas the hea- thens, who were not of this visible church and kingdom of God, . were subjects of the visible kingdom of Satan, and were types of all that ire really in a state of corrupt nature, and so are sub- jects of the devil. In the times of the gospel, God introduced a more spiritual state and economy, even of his visible church, and appointed our entrance into it, tobe macle by a visible pro- of fession our being born of God, of real faith in Christ, of true repentance, and inward holiness ; supposing that theChris- tian visible church ought to be composed of such persons, who, in ajudgment of charity, should have those inward spiritual quali- ties, which were denoted by theJewish outward privileges,forms and ceremonies, and which should render them real members of the invisible church of God. And therefore, the apostles in writing to christian churches, speak of unconverted, or unsanctified persons, under the com- mon descriptions and characters, which literally belonged to the heathenor gentile nations, in the clays of their heathenism : And, when they speak of the visible members of christian churches, it is under the common descriptions and characters which literally belonged to the Jewish nation or church, as a type of .the spiri- tual invisible .church ; and the reason is, because visible chris- tians are all bound to profess these characters, in their spiritual sense, that is, real inward holiness, and special relation to God, and, in a judgment of charity, they are to be esteemed as pos- sessing these characters and qualifications. Thence it follows, that these glorious and holy characters, are not ascribed to pro- fessingChristians, in that typical and figurative sense, in which these characters were applied to the Jewish church and nation, because theJews were but a type or emblem of what God's invi- sible church always was, find what thechristian visible church ought to be ; and if the discipline of the primitive days were still
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