kingdom. A body is a regular structure, the limbs of which being joined together, are subordinate and subservient to one another, and are animated by the same soul or spirit. For by one spirit we are all baptized into one body. It being also called a family, the members of it must have some common relation to one another; being called a city, it must be incorporated under some common laws; and being a kingdom, it must have some form of government and magistracy. Families, cities and kingdoms are societies; and the church being represented by them, must be a regular society." This being the case, those who dissent from this society, and from its rules and government, leave the family of Christ, and in that respect are not his children. They depart from his house, like the prodigal; and though they may perhaps carry with them some knowledge of his word and will, yet while they continue absent, they are deprived of the blessings of his paternal care and protection. They have not promise of enjoying his favour till they return to his family, and are again received into it. If they abide not still in a state of separation, they may be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again.

Separation from the church of Christ dismembers his kingdom. When God's people, the Israelites, divided into two nations, the consequences were truly deplorable. They not only indulged mutual enmities against each other, but the revolters set up new religious authorities, a new priesthood, new forms and places of worship, and this division finally terminated by involving the schismatics in idolatry and heathenism. If men would be saved in the kingdom of Christ, they must conform to its authorities and ordinances. They must both outwardly and inwardly be in union with it and members of it. Those who separate themselves, the apostle teaches us, are sensual, having not the spirit. The spirit of Christ pervades his body. None but members of his body can reasonably expect to be partakers of his spirit. We must be baptised into this one body, in order to be made to drink into this one spirit. Every one must be. sensible that if one of his limbs is severed from his body, it is no longer supported by his soul; it is no longer actuated and kept alive by that animating principle, which dwells no where but in his body. As, also, if the branch is broken off from the tree, or from the vine, it must immediately wither and die, for want of that strength and fatness which can spring only from the root. It cannot bear fruit, nor even subsist, except it abide in the vine, because it has ne nourishment and support. These ideas are obvious to the meanest capacity. All must understand and admit them; all must be sensible that one of the members cannot say to the body, I have no need of thee; neither can the branch say to the vine, I have no need of thee.

[To be concluded in our next.]

Exposition of the Articles of the Church.

ARTICLE VII.

Of the Old Testament.

"The Old Testament is not contrary to the New. For both in the Old and new Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only mediator between God and man, being both God and man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, who feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises. Although the law given from God by Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth, yet notwithstanding no christian man whatever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral."

THIS article was directed against the opinion of certain persons, who thought that the old testament, after the promulgation of the new, was no longer of any use; and also against the anabaptists and other enthusiasts, who mistaking some expressions in the epistles concerning justification by Christ without the works of the law, maintained that christians were under no obligation to obey the moral precepts of the mosaic dispensation. I shall, in order to prove the former part of it, repeat and explain some of those prophecies and types which refer to the offer or promise of everlasting life to mankind by Christ.

Immediately after the fall of our first parents from their state of innocence and happiness, God said to the serpent, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel....Gen. iii. 15. in which words is intimated the future saviour of the world, who was to be born of a woman, and through whom mankind would bruise the head of the serpent, that is, gain the victory over sin and death, which the serpent was the means of introducing into the world. God next declares to Abraham his gracious design of redeeming the world, Gen. xvii. 7. and xxii. 18. The same promise is repeated to Isaac, Gen. xxvi. 3. and to Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 13. In Jeremiah God says, This shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after these days I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more....Jer. xxxi. 33. In the above passage the nature of the gospel covenant is explained, as designed to produce inward purity, and to procure pardon for sin; and in Isaiah the benefits of this covenant are declared to extend to the Gentiles also. It is a light thing, saith the Lord, that thou shouldst be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest behmy salvation unto the ends of the earth....Isa. xlix. 6. The atonement also is clearly asserted in Isaiah: He was wounded for our transgressions; he was

bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all; for he was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgressions of my people he was stricken. Thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin; for he shall bear their INIQUITIES, Isaiah liii. 5. And the following passage in Hosea plainly states God's gracious intention of bestowing upon mankind everlasting life: I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plague; O grave, I will be thy del struction....Hosea xiii. 14.

To these positive declarations, relative to the redemption by Christ, we may add that the call of the Jews out of Egypt, where they suffered a severe bondage, into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, was a type of the call of mankind from the oppression and misery of sin to "the glorious liberty with which Christ hath made us free," that the law was preparatory to the gospel; that Moses as a deliverer and lawgiver, was a type of Christ; that the temporal blessings of the law were typical of the eternal blessings of the gospel; that the paschal lamb was typical of the sacrifice of Christ; the scape-goat, of the atonement; and the lifting up of the brazen serpent in the wilderness, of the crucifixion of our Savior. Many other promises, predictions, and types, might be produced out of the old testament concerning redemption through Christ, but these are amply sufficient to convince us that the old testament is not contrary to the new. For both in the old and new, everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ. Indeed, there is not only the most perfect harmony and consistency, but the closest connection and mutual dependence between the old and new testament; they are parts of the same system; they explain and confirm each other. The great plan of universal redemption, announced and typified in the one, is perfected and completed in the other; it was declared to Adam; it was promised to the patriarchs; it was typified by the law, it was predicted by the prophets; it was fulfilled in Christ. It was the eternal decree of God; it was gradually carried on through a long succession of ages, according to the dictates of his unerring wisdom, and was finally executed in his own good time: Known unto God are all his works from the beginning....Acts xv. 18. With whom a thousand years are as one day....2 Peter, iii. 8. In him there is no variableness, or shadow of turning....James i. 17.

Among the many references in the new testament to the old, which might be enumerated, I shall only mention the following declarations of our Saviour, sufficient indeed of themselves, to prove the truth of this part of the article: Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of me....John v. 39. Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me....John v. 46. Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil....Matth v. 17. The article proceeds to state that Christ is the only mediator between God and man, being both God and man. It has already been proved that Christ partook both of the divine and human nature; and

St. Paul expressly says, There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus....1 Tim. 11, 5. Christ is represented both in the Old and New Testament, as the only sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. His merits will extend to all who lived. before and after the promulgation of the gospel: As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive....1. Cor. xv. 22.-He is the Lamb which was slain from the foundation of the world....Rev. xiii. 8, "Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the Old Fathers did look only, for transitory promises." Though we now perceive the completion and application of all the prophecies, allusions, and types in the old testament, concerning the benefits to be derived from the incarnation and sufferings of Christ, yet we should remember that the exact meaning of these passages was by no means fully understood before the promulgation of the gospel. The belief, however, of the patriarchs in the promise of a redeemer, and their expectation of a future life, appear evident from their history in the old testament, and from the testimony of their faith given by the apostle in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. And it is certain that those who lived under the law, collected from their scriptures general ideas of God's design to bestow upon mankind some signal blessings through the means of the Messiah, and therefore they were naturally led to extend their hopes and expectations beyond the transitory promises of the mosaic dispensation. Job comforts himself with the following reflection, from which it is evident that he believed there would be another life in which he should be rewarded for all his sufferings: I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another....Job xix. 25. David says of himself, God has delivered my soul from the place of hell; for he shall receive me..... ..Psalm xlix. 15. and in the following passage he contrasts the success of the wicked in this world with the comforts. which he himself should enjoy in the next; he prays to be delivered from the wicked, who have their portion in this life.

The raising of the Shunamite woman's son to life....2 Kings, iv. 12, and the ascension of Elijah into heaven....2 Kings, xi. 1, &c. must also be allowed as proofs vouchsafed to the Jews of the resurrection, and of a state of happiness in heaven. It appears from various authorities, that the Jews in general believed in a future state in the time of our Savior; and if they believed that they were to exist in another life, they would of course consider themselves capable of happiness or misery in that existence, and would place their hopes and confidence in the Supreme Disposer of all events, whose interposition and mercy they had so often experienced, and who had given them such strong and repeated intimations of still greater favors and blessings. And though the Jews in general, at the time of our Sav ior's appearance on earth, had very erroneous notions of the kingdom which the Messiah was to establish, yet we have no reason to think that those notions always prevailed, or that even then they looked for worldly grandeur and temporal benefits only; on the contrary, it appears from an expression of our Saviour just now quoted,

E

that they had some expectation of happiness in another world; search the scriptures, said he to the unbelieving Jews, for in them ye think ye have eternal life....John v. 39.

"Although the law given from God to Moses, as touching ceremonies and rites, do not bind christian men, nor the civil precepts thereof ought of necessity to be received in any commonwealth, yet notwithstanding, no christian man whatever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral." The mosaic dispensation was preparatory to the christian, and its principalobjects, were to seperate the Jews from other nations, and to preserve in the world a knowledge of the one true God, which would otherwise have been utterly lost before the coming of the Mesiah. It consisted of three parts, the worship of God, the civil polity of the Jews, and precepts for the regulation of their moral conduct. The religious ceremonies and political regulations were blended together,. and were calculated to keep the Jews united among themselves, and to prevent all intercourse with the rest of the world. The coming of the Messiah, by completing the use of there institutions, put an end to their obligation. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah; not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt....Jer. xxxi. 31, 32. Agreeably to which St. Paul says, The law was our school master to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith; but after that faith is come, we are no longer under a school master. The apostles decreed that the ceremonial law was not binding upon those Gentiles, who embraced the gospel ; and that doctrine is fully explained and enforced in the epistles to the Galatians and Hebrews; but the apostles and other Jewish christians, although it was by no means required by the gospel, seem to have continued in the observance of several injunctions of the mosaic ritual, till the temple at Jerusalem was destroyed; since that time the Jews, although very numerous in different parts of the world, have no where existed as a nation; and the performance of their religious worship, as directed by the law of Moses. has been absolutely impossible. The form of civil government established among the Jews was adapted to their peculiar destination; but it was temporary even to them, and was obviously never intended for any other country or people. On the other hand, the moral precepts resting upon fixed and immutable principles, being founded in the essential difference between right and wrong, and being equally applicable to all persons, at all times, will be binding upon every man, to all eternity. And this, which appears from the whole tenor of the New Testament, is expressly asserted by Christ himself, in his sermon upon the mount : Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil ; for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled....Matt. v. 17, 18. in which declaration our Savior evidently refers to the moral law; and all the moral precepts contained in the Old Testament are not only separately confirmed and enforced in the new, but many of them are extended to a greater degree of strictness and purity.*

See sermon upon the mount, Matt. v. &c.