God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he had prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac, and (or even) he that received the promises, offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called," (so that he was his only begotten with respect unto the promise, Gen. xxi. 12. xxii. 9.) "accounting that God was able even to raise him up from the dead, from whence also he received him in a figure."

The design of the apostle in this discourse, is to set forth and commend the faith of Abraham from its fruits, in the whole course of his obedience; but he builds it upon, and resolves it into his call: "By faith Abraham being CALLED." It is not my present purpose to open particularly the discourse of the apostle, which must be referred to its proper place; but as what we do now, is in a subserviency to the right understanding of the Epistle, I have cited the account here given of the call of Abraham, and of his faith and obedience, as the reason of our insisting on it, and as the ground on which this discourse rests. Neither shall I now at large declare the nature of this call of Abraham, with the several occurrences that accompanied it; partly because it is already touched on in a former exercitation, and partly because I have elsewhere handled it more largely, and cleared it from the corrupt traditions and opinions of the Jews concerning it. But as this was the root from which the Jewish church did grow, the stock into which all Mosaic institutions of worship were grafted, it is necessary that we give a brief historical account concerning it.

§ 4. Abraham was called by his parents, Abram, that is, a high father; not without a signal presaging providence of God. For as of old they gave significant names to their children, so in this they had respect to their present condition, or to some prospect of future things given them by the Spirit of God, in which they or theirs should be concerned. Thus we have the reasons given us for the names of Cain, Gen. iv. 5. of Seth, ver. 28. of Noah, ch. v. 29. of Peleg, ch. x. 25. and of sundry others. And if we may not suppose that the parents of Abraham were directed to give him this name of a high father, by the spirit of prophecy, yet if we consider its suitableness to what God had designed him for, and its readiness to yield to that change which God made afterwards in it, unto a great strengthening of his faith and significancy in a way of instruction unto future generations, we must grant that it was done by the designing holy wise providence of God. For he was a high father indeed, as being the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the flesh. In process of time, upon the solemn establishment of the covenant with him, God changed this name of Dax into On728, Gen. xvii. 5. "Neither shall thy name

any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham." On a similar account, God also changed the names of some other persons, or superadded new names to those whereby they were called before. Thus Israel was called Jacob, Gen. xxxiii. 28. upon his prevalence with God as a prince; Jedidiah was called Solomon, 2 Sam. xii. 25. because the Lord loved him; and many doubtless had new names given to them by themselves or others, or had some letter or syllable in their names changed, so altering their signification, upon emergent occasions. Hence in the Old Testament, we find in several places the same person spoken of by divers names. Now this change in the name of Abraham was not, as the Jews fancy, to honour him with the addition of a letter out of the Tetragrammaton, but for the addition of a new prophetical significancy to his name. God himself expressly declares this: "Thy name shall be

7 2117 28, Abraham, for a father of a multitude of nations have I made thee." According as he said before, ver. 3. "Thou shalt be a father of a multitude of nations, in his name denoting 2, a multitude, that is of nations, God himself expounding his own design. And in this there is a solemn prefiguration of the implanting of believers of all nations into the covenant and faith of Abraham; for this name he received upon the solemn establishment of the covenant with him, as the apostle explains the place, Rom. iv. 11. 17. All then who be lieve, are taken into the covenant of Abraham. And as to the privileges of it, and the inheritance to be obtained by it, they are no less his children and heirs, than those who proceeded from his loins according to the flesh, as hath been manifested in our Exercitation concerning the oneness of the church. And in this also God manifested what was his design in this call, and separation of Abraham to himself, even to make and constitute him and his posterity the means of bringing forth the promised seed, wherein all nations were to be blessed.

§5. Abraham being of the tenth generation from Noah, exclu sive, was the son of Terah, of whom it is said, Gen. xi. 26, that Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abram, Nahor and Haran; not doubtless in the same year, but then the eldest of them was born, whoever he was. If Abraham was the eldest, as he is first expressed, he was born 292 years after the flood, in the three hundred and ninety-second year of the life of Shem, who outlived him thirty-five years. He was the sixth from Heber, and was born in the two hundred and twenty-fifth year of his age, who continuing longest of all the postdiluvian patriarchs, outlived Abraham about sixty-four years. But there is a difficulty in this account. For if Abraham was born in the seventieth year of the age of Terah, Terah living in all two hundred and five years, Abraham at the death of Terah must

needs be a hundred and thirty-five years of age. But the Scripture saith expressly, that at his departure out of Haran, upon the death of his father, he was no more than seventy-five years old. And if he was seventy-five years old at the death of his father, who lived two hundred and five years, he must have been born in the one hundred and thirtieth of his father's life, and not be fore, which brings forward his birth and death sixty years beyond the former account: so that he outlived Shem twenty-five years, and died only four years before Heber. Although therefore he be mentioned before Haran, Gen. xi. 26. yet indeed Haran was the eldest son of Terah, and born sixty years before Abraham. And it appears from the story, that Lot and Sarah who were the children of Haran, (if Sarah was the Ischa mentioned, as most suppose she was, Gen. xi. 29.) were not much younger than Abraham himself. For when Abraham was a hundred years old, Sarah was ninety, Gen. xvii. 17. and Lot may well be supposed to be elder than she; so that of necessity Haran must be many years elder than Abraham, even no less than sixty, as we have declared.

§ 6. His nativity and education was in Ur of the Chaldees, Gen. xi. 28. 31. This place is said to be on the other side of the flood,, or the river, Josh. xxiv. 2. that is, from the land of Canaan, on the other side of the great river Euphrates eastward. It was also on the other side of the Tigris, on the east of Aram Naharaim, or Mesopotamia, properly so called; which is not insisted on, because Abraham came over Tygris to Haran with his father Terah. "He came out," saith Stephen, "from the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Canaan," Acts vii. 4. He says indeed, that before he came unto Canaan, he dwelt in Mesopotamia, ver. 2. where the land of Haran lay, For the name of Mesopotamia was given of old to all the adjacent regions, even to the Persian Sea. Thus Pliny evidently uses the word, lib. vi. cap. 26. Mesopatamia tota Assyriorum fuit vicatim dispersa, præter Babylona, et Ninum. All Mesopotamia belonged unto the Assyrians, and consisted of scattered villages, unless it were Babylonia, and the country about Nineveh.' And again, Reliqua pars Mesopotamia Assyriaque, Babylonia appellata est. So that he equals Mesopotamia with Assyria; and how great a tract of those regions it comprehended, is manifest from Ptolemy, Strabo, and others. Eupolemus in Eusebius, Præparat. Evang. lib. 9. placeth Ovgi, Ura, in Babylonia; and there also Pliny mentions Ura upon the banks of Euphrates, lib. 5. cap. 24. Fertur Euphrates usque ad Uram. But this seems not to be the Ur where Abraham dwelt; nor was there any reason that in going to Canaan, he should remove from any part of Babylonia upon Euphrates to Charan. It is more likely to be the place mentioned by Ammianus, lib. 5. where he says

that the Romans in six days came from Corduena in Armenia, ad Ur nomine, Persicum castellum, to Ur, a Persian castle. And this he placeth between Nisibis and Tygris, not far from the place where it is supposed with probability that the ark rested after the flood. Thus it would seem, that the family of Heber kept their first seat, not accompanying the 77, or sons of men, Gen. xi. 2-4. those apostates who went from the east to find a place to fix the seat of their rebellion against God. Broughton contendeth, that Ur was in the vale of the Chaldeans, that is in Babylonia, a very little way, or some few miles from Charan; averring, that Stephen cannot otherwise be defended, who affirms that he was in Mesopotamia before he dwelt in Charan. But this defence of Stephen is needless, seeing, as we have manifested, Stephen took Mesopotamia in a large sense, as others did also, giving the same extent to it as to Assyria, the denomination arising from the most eminent and fruitful of these regions. Moreover, the removal of a little way, or a few miles, answers not the description which the Holy Ghost gives us of this journey, Gen. xi. 31. "And Terah took Abraham his son, and Lot the son of Haran, and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan, and they came unto Haran and dwelt there." Their design was to go to Canaan. Now, as the Ura which was in Babylonia, was situated on this side of Euphrates, as Pliny testifies, Abraham could not go from thence to Canaan by Haran, without twice passing with all his family over Euphrates; besides, the expression of their journeying to Haran, will not suit with any imaginary Ur within a few miles of it. Nor is it of any weight that it is called Ur of the Chaldees, whose proper seat was in Babylonia, and not extended much farther eastward; seeing if the Chaldees, as is most probable, were called Chasdim, as they are constantly, from T Chesed the son of Nachor, the brother of Abraham, there must of necessity be allowed a historical prolepsis in the words; and thus that place is called Ur of the Chaldees, from whence the Chaldees were afterwards to have their original, who in time possessed Babylonia and the parts adjacent.

§7. Whilst Abraham lived with his progenitors in Ur, he no doubt was infected, as they were, with much false worship and idolatry. For so Joshua affirms expressly, that they served

nox, ch. xxiv. 2. even those whose worship God af terwards prohibited in the first precept of the law, 7 On bx, There shall not be unto thee other gods; those, or such as those, whom they served beyond the flood. By other gods, are meant all false gods. I have elsewhere considered and exploded the Jewish story, about Abraham's discovery of the true God; about his consequent renunciation of all idolatry,

with the breaking of his father's images, and his being cast for that cause by Nimrod into the fire, all about the forty-fourth year of his age. All these figments, with that of Haran's being consumed by fire in the sight of his father, they derive from the supposed signification of the name, which they would have to signify fire, Gen. xi. 28. But as in the passages where it relates to the Chaldeans (as Ur of the Chaldees), it is apparently the name of a place, a town or country; so it rather signifies a valley than fire. And those words, Isa. xxiv. 15. by

which we translate in the text, Wherefore באדים כבדו יהוה

glorify ye the Lord in the fires, may be better read as in the margin, in the vallies, for this corresponds better with the following words, and the name of the Lord God of Israel in the isles of the sea. At what year of his age he left Ur with his father, is not expressed. But it is apparent, that it was towards the latter end of the life of Terah, after the death of Haran his eldest son, and after Nahor and Abraham were married to Milcha and Isca his daughters; and after Sarah had continued barren some remarkable space of time, Gen. xi. 28-32.

§ 8. From Ur therefore, with his father and the rest of their family, he removed to Haran with a design of proceeding to Canaan, Gen. xi. 31. Where this Haran was situated, we before declared. Stephen calls it Xagga, Charran, and so do the Latin writers:

Assyrias Latio maculavit sanguine Charras,

says Lucan, speaking of the overthrow of the army of Crassus, near that place. And it may be pronounced either way in the original, from the ambiguous force of the Hebrew Cheth; but it seems to be best expressed by Charan. How long he stayed here is uncertain, as was said before. That it was not very long, appears from his having been married so long before he came thither, that the barrenness of Sarah had been observed. And yet that they abode there some years is no less evident, from ch. xii. 5. "Abraham took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls or servants that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan." It is not the work of a few days or months that is here described. This gathering of substance and the getting of souls, was a business of some years, of how many it is uncertain. What was the design of Terah in his attempt to go to the land of Canaan, is not absolutely certain. The special call of Abraham to that country could not be the reason of it; for it is most probable, yea indeed undeniable, that Abraham did not receive this call until after the death of Terah. This journey then they undertook, as led by motives which are not revealed. But in the provi