they were upon no other terms of salvation than man in innocency was under, which was Obey perfectly and live, or if thou sin, thou shalt die.' For this had been to leave them as hopeless as the devils, when once they had sinned." Baxter's Reasons, p. 399.

“All men have sinned, and are fallen short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." Rom. iii. 3. All men are justified, i. e. according to God's favourable intention and design. Yea, the very reason why God permitted sin and death to prevail so universally, is intimated to be his design of extending a capacity of life and righteousness unto all. "He hath shut up all under sin, that he might have mercy upon all." Barrow, vol. iii. p. 316.

SECTION XLII.

Prophetic Descriptions of Christ.

Ir deserves the consideration of all who maintain the doctrines of the Divinity of Christ, and of his atoning sacrifice, and who seek to support these doctrines by an appeal to the prophetic declarations of the Messias; whether such texts can be brought to bear on those points, if we exclude the great majority of mankind from the benefits of his advent.

"Unto

If, for example, we interpret the celebrated passage of Isaiah ix. 6, 7. us a child is born," &c., as a proof of the full and proper divinity of Christ; let it be considered, whether any thing short of universal redemption can be ascribed to one "who has the government on his shoulders, who shall be called the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace." Or, if we think that Christ was "the Shiloh to whom the gathering of the nations should be," let it be

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considered, whether this does not refer to all the nations? or, if we assert that he is described as the King "who shall reign in righteousness," "who shall be an ensign for the people," as "a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in dry places." (See Isa. xxxii. and lxi.) Let it be determined, whether such ascriptions can be reconciled to the exclusion of the Heathen from the benefits of the Gospel dispensation.

"The whole import of Jonah's mission partakes of the Christian character. When we see that he is sent to carry the tidings of judgment, but to exemplify the grant of mercy, to a great Heathen city, &c. without staying to discuss whether all this be a formal type of the genius of the Christian religion, it is plainly a real example of some of its chief properties, in the manifested efficacy of repentance, the grant of pardon, and the communication of God's mercy to the Heathen world." Davison on Prophecy, p: 368.

SECTION XLIII.

Nineveh.-B. C. 860.

ARISE go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me," &c. Jonah iii. The prophet fulfilled his commission; the Ninevites repented "in sackcloth and ashes, and God saw their works, that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which he said he would do unto them and he did it not." ver. 5-10.

Such is a signal and decisive evidence for our argument. First, It is an example of a great Heathen city" of three days' journey" in circumference, which was saved from destruction on its timely repentance and reformation. Secondly, It evinces, that the souls of these Pagans were as dear to God as those of his peculiar people. Thirdly, It is a proof, that every nation shall be accepted according to its moral ability. Nothing is here said or insinuated respecting the inhabitants becoming Jewish

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proselytes, or respecting their faith in the Messias. Their repentance was that of moral improvement. "Let us turn every man from his evil way, and from the violence of his hands," ver. 8.

And, that no one may say, this was a merely temporal deliverance, and that it had no relation to their eternal condition, let us remember what Christ has declared concerning it: "The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonas," &c. Matt. xii. 41.

But, if the unwillingness of the Jewish prophet to undertake this mission, arose, as Archbishop Sharp conjectures, from his regarding the mission to a Heathen country as an ill omen to his own nation, the Jews; then, the inference becomes still stronger in relation to our argument; and, then, how apposite is the Divine remonstrance :

"Hadst thou compassion on the gourd, &c. and should not I have compassion on such a multitude," &c. Ch. iv. 10. 14.