SECTION IL 7 and scourgings, and painful abstinences, and practised all the austere rites of their religions, while we are cold and indif- ferent, sluggish and indolent in paying the sacred worship we owe to the great and blessed God and to his Son Jesus ? Lord, will not this heathen zeal condemn our shameful sloth and neg- ligence? Again 2dly, We are christians and not Jews : how much should our practices of piety exceed theirs ? Our gospel is not hidden under types and figures, nor veiled under the smoke of incense and sacrifice, as it was in the religion of Moses: how cheerfully should we receive and study and rejoice in this gospel of salvation, which shines amongst usin its fullest light ? And while we remember that we are freed from the bondage of numerous ceremonies, how diligently should we at- tend to thè two sacred institutions of baptism and the Lord's- supper, which Christ has given us, and take care that all the spiritual designs of them be attained in us and upon us ? We are not waitingfor a Messiah yet to come, which was the case of many prophets and kings and righteous men under the Jewish dispensation : blessed are our eyes and our ears, for they have read and heard those glorious transactions and doctrines relating to the Messiah the great prophet, the king of Israel, and the Saviour of theworld, for which the fathers waited from age to age. With what zeal and joy, with what holy exercises and raptures of faith and love should we receive Jesus the Son of God, the great Messiah, who has all the characters of this divine prophet and this promised saviour found in him ? With what a firm and steady soul shouldwe receive the doctrines, and main- tain the articles of the religion of Jesus, in opposition to all the snares of infidelity, and the artifices of every deceiver. Again, we are not left, as theJewswere, to theobscure lan- guage of prophecy, to inform us of the grace and blessings of the Messiah's kingdom; nor are we put to spell out our faith by such weak and idle:commentaries of men as the Jewish rabbins have left us, whereby to understand the law of Moses : we have the New Testament given us to explain the Old ; Christ and his apostles are sent to us as interpreters of the ancient prophets : theveil is taken away while the books of Moses are read among us, and many of the dark figures and the'typical scenes of provi- dence that belonged to theJewish dispensation, are now unfolded and explained in a divine light. How should our hearts burn within us under an evangelical ministry, in imitation of the two disciples ; Luke xxiv. 32. while Christ was unfolding to them the spiritual gloriesand graces of his kingdom, which were deli- vered by Moses and the prophets in more obscure language ? How delightfully should we converse with the two books of God, the Old Testament and New, when we understand the scrip. ture so far beyond what the best of the Jews could do, who had
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