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formidable the enemies of the Christian may appear, Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.

Though it is the design of these lectures rather to interpret the scripture than to apply it; yet we are to consider the application as the end, and the interpretation as the means: therefore I cannot help indulging myself sometimes in dwelling upon the moral part, which is the most edi fying of all. The history of the church in the wilderness is figurative, and we have learned what it signifies: but what good will this knowledge do us, if there is no counsel with it? What shall we gain by seeing how men were lost, unless we take advice from thence and learn how we may be saved? I therefore do not spare, when occasion offers, to add to my interpretations such spiritual advice as arises out of them. The length and labour of my undertaking is the greater upon this account; but I hope your profit will be greater in proportion. The church that went from Egypt to Canaan gives us an example of every thing that can happen to the Christian Church from the beginning of it even to the end of the world: therefore no historical figure of the scripture is of more importance to us than this journey of the Hebrews through the wilder

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ness and I ought not yet to lay it aside. For there are two particulars remaining, which are of great signification: the one is the rebellion of Corah, and the other is the settlement of the church in Canaan, a land of the Gentiles.

St. Jude, in his epistle concerning the corruption of the church, speaks of some who perished in the gainsaying of Core: therefore this same evil which happened in the church of Moses, is to be found in the church of Christ, and it behoves us to consider what it was. Corah and his company had no dispute about the object or form of divine worship: they questioned none of the doctrines of the law; they rose up against the persons of Moses and Aaron; that is against the civil and ecclesiastical authority; contending that themselves and all the congregation had an equal right; that Moses and Aaron had taken too much upon themselves; and by exercising an usurped authority were abusing and making fools of the people. This was their sin, and they maintained it to the last, and perished in it. It was the dispute of popular power against divine authority and wherever the like pretensions are avowed by Christians, and the same arguments used in support of them, there we see the gainsaying of Corah. It is a lamentable.

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circumstance attending this sin, that it inspires great boldness and obstinacy, such as we read of in Corah and his party. Other sinners are apt to be ashamed of themselves; but these never; because they assert their own sanctity in the act of their disobedience. When they set up human right against that which is by God's appointment; the more proud and obstinate they are, the more colour they seem to give to their pretensions. It is one reason why rebellion was so severely punished in Corah, and is now so severely threatened in the New Testament that men are never known to repent of it. In vain did Moses exclaim and remonstrate against the wickedness of Corah: he and all his party preserved the same good opinion of themselves, and persisted in it to the last; even appealing to God himself, though they were risen up against God's ministers; till the earth opened; and the fire devoured them.

From this example of Corah, we are to learn, that God considers all opposition against lawful authority, as a sin against himself. He declares that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry* : the meaning of which, as it stands in the book of Samuel, is this; that if a man were a Jew, and

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1 Samuel xv. 23.

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yet a rebel, he might as well be an heathen: if he were too stubborn to submit to the ordinances of God, he might as well be a sorcerer, or serve idols. And it is worthy of observation, that this severe sentence is against Saul, a king, who usurped the authority of the priesthood, and pleaded a godly reason for it. But so jealous is God, for the wisest ends, upon this subject, that no dignity of person, no appearance of reason, is admitted in excuse for the sin of rebellion. We therefore rightly pray in the Liturgy of the church of England, that God would deliver us from rebellion in the state and schism in the church; and in order to this, we should also pray, that he would deliver us from the principles out of which they proceed; for none of our reasonings will prevail in this case. For my own part, I must confess, that if there be any man who is so far infatuated as to have persuaded himself that God is no proprietor of power in the world of his own making and governing, and that all men are born to a state of equality; I would no more reason with that man, than I would preach temperance to a swine, or honesty to a wolf. I would leave him to himself, and turn toward those who have not yet received the infection.

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The settlement of the church of the Hebrews in Canaan, a land of the Heathens, is the last article I am to explain, as prefigurative of the Christian church. It is mentioned as such in the apology of St. Stephen against the Jews: Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus (i. e. Joshua) into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers. The doctrine of all others most unacceptable and odious to a Jew was this of the translation of the tabernacle of God to the Gentiles. St. Stephen therefore does not literally affirm it, but covertly, and as a prophet should do, under the shadow of that antient history which was intended to foreshew it. The Jewish church derived much danger from its situation among the Canaanites; for though God had driven them out as possessors, and established his own people in their land, he left some of the former possessors to be thorns in their sides for trial and punishment: and their history shews how often they were ensnared by the abominable doctrines of idolatry, 'till the captivity of Babylon was the reward of their apostacy.

Wonderful was the settlement of the Jews

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