DISC. all thofe, who live and die in the Lord, VIII. fhall indeed reft from their labours.

The

Jews had fufficient grounds, from their own Scriptures, to confider it as fuch. They should have confidered it as fuch; and they should have carried on their thoughts to the reft and the inheritance of the faints in light, whither their fathers were gone before them through faith in the promised seed, the Meffiah, whose office it was, like another Jofhua, by vanquishing the adverse powers, to open the kingdom of heaven, that true land of Promife, to all believers.

The fourth pofition maintained by the Jews was, that the prophecies warranted them in the expectation of a Meffiah, who, as a temporal prince, fhould fecure them in their poffeffions, by fubduing their civil enemies, and reigning over them in Judea.

The fame prejudice which operated with regard to the family of Abraham, the law of Mofes, and the land of Promife, operated

fiah.

VIII.

rated likewise with regard to the Mef- DISC. This was but a natural and neceffary confequence. For if they had fixed their thoughts on their national privileges, their ceremonies, and the inheritance of Canaan, the Meffiah by them defired must needs be one, who would defend and preferve them in the enjoyment of those privileges, those ceremonies, and that inheritance. Accordingly, the notion current among the Jews, when our Lord was upon earth, and which, we find, ftuck faft to his difciples even after his refurrection, was, that Meffiah, when he came, fhould " restore again "the kingdom to Ifrael." And the grand argument infifted on in the Talmud, and by the Rabbins, is, that he did not fubdue the nations by the force and terror of his arms. He overcame not the Gentiles, fay they, with martial power; he loaded us not with their spoils; he neither enlarged our dominion, nor increased our power ".

a Acts i. 6.

See PASCHAL, P. 170.

DISC.

VIII.

Now the Scriptures do undoubtedly defcribe Meffiah, as one, who fhould deliver his people from their enemies, and reign over them in glorious majefty. The Jews conftrued those paffages of a temporal deliverance from the Roman yoke, and a temporal reign in Palestine. But did they conftrue them aright? Do not the fame Scriptures unfold the defign of his coming, and the process of the redemption by him, in the fulleft and moft particular manner? Surely they do. How many paffages are there, always allowed by the ancient, and not now denied by the modern Jews, to belong to Meffiah, which defcribe him as poor, lowly, defpifed, afflicted, oppreffed, dying, dead? Would you now compose a man's character, without accounting for the contrarieties in it? Can you be faid to have compofed that of the Meffiah, while you leave out one half of it? Are you not bound to find a person, in whom all the feemingly contradictory particulars are reconciled? They are eafily, they are completely reconciled in the perfon of Jesus,

as

as fet forth, by us Chriftians, in his two- DISC. fold nature, as God and man. They never were, they never will, they never can be' reconciled in any other: and the Jews, by their modern fiction of two different Meffiahs, to answer the purpose, have at once justified us, and given fentence against themfelves.

But that the force of the prophetical testimony in favour of the Meffiahship of Jesus may appear at one view, permit me, in a concife and fummary way, to recall the several particulars of it to your remembrance, as I find them collected by a very learned and eminent writer.

The prophets speak of a new and second covenant, which God would make with his people they mention, not once, or twice, but very often, the converfion of the Gentiles from fuperftition and idolatry, to the worship of the true God: they fpeak of four fucceffive empires, the laft of which was the Roman empire; and under this last empire, they fay, that a new and

VIII.

DISC. everlasting kingdom fhould be established, by one to whom God should give absolute power and dominion. A great person was to come, who fhould be Immanuel, or God with us, the Son of God and the Son of man, the feed of Abraham and of David; born of a virgin, poor and obfcure, and yet one whom David calls his Lord; the Lord to whom the temple belonged, the mighty God, a great king, an everlasting priest, though not of the tribe of Levi; born at Bethlehem; a prophet like unto Mofes, but greater than Mofes ; a prophet, who should preach to the poor and meek, and proclaim liberty to the captives, and comfort the mourners, and heal the broken hearted; who should proclaim his Gospel, first and principally, in the land of Zebulon and Naphthali, in Galilee of the Gentiles; who should have a forerunner in the fpirit of Elias, crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; who fhould inftruct in a mild and peaceable manner, without wrath and contention, before the destruction of the temple, in which temple