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In the fentence, pronounced by the God of infinite juftice and mercy upon our first parents, we fee the groundwork and basis of all the Prophecies. It is the foundation of the glorious hope, in the fulfilment of which, every defcendant of Adam has the strongest intereft. It was the firft gracious intimation of peace and deliverance, of redemption and happiness, given to fallen and miferable man -the earliest ray of "the Sun of righteouf nefs" which in the last days illumined a guilty race, and fpread its light over the world.

CLASS

CLASS I.

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

The Promifes made to Abraham refpecting his Pofterity and the Meffiah.

ABRAHAM, it is well known, was the most distinguished of the Patriarchs, the venerable ancestor of the Ifraelites, and Ifmaelites, or, as they are now called, of the Jews and Arabs2. His name is at this day celebrated throughout the Eaft; and various writings and traditions, carefully preferved through the long lines of his pofterity, confirm and illuftrate the hiftory, which we find recorded of him in the Old Teftament. From this hiftory, every part of which is interefting, and almost every circumftance prophetic, I have felected one of the moft ftriking examples of the truth of prophecy, ftill open to the to the eyes of man, and

a Y. W. 2083. B. C. 1921.

E 4

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which is also an important link in the chain of evidence, to prove its great defign.

Abraham was the tenth in regular descent from Noah, through Shem, to whom the divine promise of peculiar protection and bleffing had been given, apparently as the reward of filial piety, and in whose family the worship of the true God was preserved, amidst the idolatry of the other defcendants of Noah. At the especial call of the Almighty, Abraham left his native country Ur of the Chaldeans, in Mefopotamia, then beginning to be infected by idolatry. And it was in confequence of his faith in God, and ready obedience to his commands, that he was fayoured with the promises we are now to confider.

Upon the remarkable prophecy concerning Shem, Ham, and Japhet, Gen. ix. the learned Jofeph Mede obferves, Book I. Dif. xlviii. " that there never yet hath been a fon of Cham, who hath fhaken a fceptre over the head of Japhet. Sem hath fubdued Japhet, and Japhet hath fubdued Sem, but Cham never fubdued either. And this fate was it, which made Hannibal, a child of Canaan, cry out with the amazement of his foul, I acknowledge the fate of Carthage." (See Livy, lib. xxvii, in fine.) In the Hebrew language Shem fignifies renowned, Japhet enlarged, and Canaan abject, or humbled.

As

As this Prophecy forms, as it were, the grand outline of the building, the foundation of which we have examined in the former Chapter, I fhall endeavour to draw it out diftinctly, for the infpection of the reader, before his attention is called to the circumftances of its completion.

Now the Lord had faid unto Abram [before the death of his father Terah] Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee: and I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blef fing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curfe him that curfeth thee; and in thee fhall all the families of the earth be bleffed. So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Abram was 75 years old when he departed out of Haran, where Terah his father died."-Upon his first entering Canaan, "the Lord appeared unto Abram, and faid, unto thy feed will I give this land." Some time after his return from Egypt, whither he had been led by a famine in the land of Canaan, with which he must by that time

Genefis xii. 1-4.

have been well acquainted, having paffed through it from north to fouth, "the Lord faid unto Abraham, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art [probably the mountain on the east of Bethel, where he had pitched his tent, before he went into Egypt, and had built an altar unto the Lord] northward, and fouthward, and eastward, and weftward: for all the land which thou feeft, to thee will I give it, and unto thy feed for ever. And I will make thy feed as the duft of the earth; fo that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy feed also be numbered. Arife, walk through the land, in the length of it, and in the breadth of it [fearless of danger from its inhabitants]: for I will give it unto theed."-These promises were repeated after the victory obtained by Abraham over the Kings, and his refusal of the spoil offered him by "Melchifedeck the King of Salem, and Priest of the most high God." The time of the captivity in Egypt was exactly predicted; the limits of the land they were afterwards to poffefs, were exactly determined; and the nations they were to deftroy, were enumerated. Know of a furety, that thy feed fhall be a stranger in a land that

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d Genefis xiii. 14-17.

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