which, for the sake of their nation, and in honour of Jesus, they count it no burden to undertake. For if Christ himself depriveth them not of the name of Jew upon receiving his faith, he depriveth them not of what that name doth signify. They may if they please (I say not they ought, for here I see not my way clearly, but surely there is nothing to prevent them) keep those observances in honour of Jesus, which their nation keepeth in honour of Moses. But, if hereupon they should claim any superiority in the church, then would they destroy the unity of the body of Christ, where there is "neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free." But because it is thus written of male and female, no one would therefore say that a female had not still a female's part to perform; or that, performing this faithfully, and carefully abstaining from the office of the man, she doth thereby introduce schism into the church: nor, because it is thus written of bond and free, would any one say that a bondman should insist upon his liberty, and refuse the commands of his master, because he and his master are equal and alike in Christ; or that his master should, to prevent schism, at once emancipate his slaves; seeing that the very contrary is enjoined by the Apostle in all his epistles, and especially in one, where he requireth the slave, not to be less, but rather more dutiful, because his master was a Christian. They who thus speak, and even doctors in the church are not ashamed thus to speak, have conceived a totally erroneous view of Christian unity, which standeth not in uniformity of rank, or station, or person, not in equality and levelness, but doth, in spite of all natural diversities, yea, in harmony with all appointed ordinances of creation and providence, preserve unity of spirit, and of end, and of blessedness. Why, then, if male and female, bond and free, can well enough consist, yea, and are required to consist, with Christian liberty, why should the poor Jew thus go to the wall, and be forced to become Scotchman, or Englishman, or German, or Presbyterian, or Episcopalian, and just what you please he should become, in order, forsooth, that there may be no schism in the body? Why, if you can be Presbyterian, and Episcopalian, and preserve the unity of Christ, may not the Jew remain Jew, and do the same? It is just

another of our hard-hearted persecutions of that illfavoured race. The Apostle, writing to the Galatians, hath these words: "If ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing; for I testify unto every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to keep the whole law." This was spoken to those churches of Galatia which had been troubled by certain who came down from Judea, and taught the brethren, saying, "Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved." This question gave rise to the council of Jerusalem, which determined that the Gentiles should not be so bound, but for the present should, as a matter of expediency, conform in some particulars to the Jewish customs. Notwithstanding this, these Galatian churches, at the time the Apostle wrote his Epistle, five years after the council of Jerusalem, were still given to impose Judaical customs upon the church, as ordinances for salvation. This spirit of bondage and formality to resist, the Apostle labours mainly throughout that Epistle; and in the passage quoted above lays it down, that if a man should deem circumcision necessary to his salvation, and in such a spirit submit to it, he rejecteth Christ and the way of grace and liberty, and adopteth the way of works and of bondage; and so must stand or fall according to the law, whose rubric is, "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them;" and to say woe to every man, be he Jew or Gentile, who thinketh to be saved by the works of any law, whether the law written on the heart or the law written on the tables of stone. This being granted and held fast as the very anchor of holiness, the question whether a believing Jew ought or ought not, may or may not, keep the law as not adding any thing to Christ, not dividing with him the weight of salvation, but distinguishing the Jew, and preserving his relation to Abraham without affecting his relation to Christ; the question, whether being baptised by the Holy Ghost as Christ was, he may not do as Christ did, and as Peter and as Paul did, and as the primitive church did, is not affected at all. A question verily it is, of great importance, upon which the church at this time hath little light, and yet is acting with an obstinate and perverse decision, which only the clearest light and the strongest conviction could justify.

I feel assured that the door which openeth into this chamber of the house of David is now opening, and will soon be altogether opened. Till then, we will not see the second part of this promise to the angel of the church of Philadelphia fulfilled; till this, we will not see that election here promised brought into the bosom of the church. Much hath already been done, in opening the door of knowledge and utterance, concerning the second coming and kingdom of the Lord upon the earth, and concerning the part which the Jewish nation, as a people, shall occupy in that dispensation. The doctrine, the true doctrine, hath almost completely been discovered to the church. It remains that some light should be cast upon the discipline of the Jews who enter the church. At present they are forced to renounce the name of Jew; which is contrary to the Lord's solemn averment in the text, that no one is entitled to that name until he shall have believed, instead of then being denuded of it. My own opinion is, that they should walk just as our Lord walked after his baptism, always fulfilling the righteousness of the law, the letter of it whenever they might see it right and profitable to do so.

We now come to the important matter to which, what went before is but the introduction. "Behold I give of them calling themselves Jews;" not the whole nation, but some of them, an election from amongst them. The epistle to the church of Smyrna presents us with the Jews passing into a state of blasphemy, and perhaps carrying along with them, a part of the Christian church also into a state of mortal schism; and from that time forth until now, they come not into this historical series of the aspects of the church. Accordingly since the second and third centuries, when the Ebionite and Cerinthian heresies disappeared, we have till this day no stirring of life amongst the Jews. There have indeed been, in every age a remnant, saved out of Israel, who, having lost their identity in the church, do therefore occupy no place in the representation of these long ages. But if we have judged aright in placing this Philadelphian age about the present time, and if we have found its antitype in those who believe in Jesus Christ; the True, coming in the truth of our nature, the Holy, perfecting holiness therein; in Jesus Christ, the head of David's house and David's Lord, whom

David in his royal acts prefigured; in those who have opened the subject of the New Jerusalem, which cometh down from Heaven with all its mysteries, maintaining the broad and substantial truth against the nominalism of the Reformed church and the self-sufficiency of the evangelical world; then should we at this time be looking for the gift, the goodly gift of an election from the seed of Abraham, heirs of his name, but not heirs of his faith. Here it may reasonably be inquired, whether there be any authority for believing, that towards the conclusion of this age, there will be any such ingathering of the Jews into the Christian church. There has indeed always been a tradition to this effect, which has become the ground of many prayers, as I well remember in my youth to have heard, both in the congregation and in the family of my fathers. But how doth this tradition, that besides the first fruits, which came in in the days of the Apostles, there is also to be an ingathering of the Jews before the dispensation of the elect is concluded; how doth this tradition stand with the word of God written in the Holy Scripture? It standeth well, as I now proceed to shew, from a consideration of the xi th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans.

This forms part of a discourse contained in the ixth, xth, and xith chapters of that Epistle, explanatory of God's dealings by the Jews, which then began to be discovered in his providence; and resolving it into his own sovereign right of election, which every man who honoureth God must ever assent unto, but which the Jews as a people had forgotten, substituting in its stead a claim of right in virtue of their being descended from Abraham's loins but for a sinner to put forth a claim of right towards God for any thing whatever, save for death, is either to deny the eternal holiness of God and his own sinfulness, or to mistake the nature of the demerit and guilt of sin. And when any person or persons, as the nation of the Jews, do thus in thought and deed belie the eternal constitution of God's holiness and of a sinful creature's merit of death, God will, yea and must, if the dispensation of grace is to go on, mark the falsehood of such a system, by casting the persons who hold it, into the most fearful affliction and misery, in order thereby to make conspicuous unto the world, that they lie in thinking and declaring that they

have a natural right to his favour and a fee simple in his benefits. This is the argument of the Apostle in the ix th chapter, where, by the instances of Ishmael and Isaac, of Esau and Jacob, he shews that God made no account of Abraham's or of Isaac's seed, but of his own purpose of election according to his promise; and likewise by the instance of Pharaoh he teacheth them that there was not only no claim of right, but on the other hand to those who would plead and stand upon it, there was a judgment of blindness of mind and hardness of heart, which God had begun to execute against Israel from the days of Hosea and Isaiah, whose prophecies to this effect he largely and most appropriately citeth. Then passing onward in his discourse, he openeth in the xth chapter the practical reason of that rejection of Christ by his nation, which lay so heavy at his heart, and maketh it to consist in this, that instead of giving faith to God's word, which was near them, in their mouth and in their heart, and had been preached to the utmost bounds of the dispersion, they went about to do this work and that work, and busied themselves with an outward ceremonial and formality; as if there could be any keeping of the law without faith of the word of God; and having thus instructed them in the cause of their unbelief, and drawn their hearts, what he could, to the acknowledgment of God's unmerited goodness and the belief of his holy word, he passeth, in the xith chapter, to unfold unto them the future purposes of God by the Jewish nation; and this he doth in the way of question and answer, propounding first, "Hath God then cast away his people?" To this he gives the most direct and solemn denial, appealing to himself as an instance to the contrary. The adducing of this instance shews clearly the nature and intent of the question to be, Are the Jewish people then utterly cast out from the church of the living God? This Luther held, regarding them as the standing instance of the state of the damned; and his opinion hath here, as in every thing else, coloured the opinions of the Reformed churches: but that he held an untruth, Paul with an asseveration solemnly declareth; and after quoting himself as an instance to the contrary, he reverteth to past times, and upon God's own word to Elias shews, that there was a remnant then of seven thou