CHAP. CX.
Peace.Blessed be the God of truth, the God of peace, who hath so long preserved us in this our retired conference without interruptions. His mercy still shields us while you express and I listen to that so much imitated, yet most inimitable state of Israel.
Yet, before you descend to particulars, dear Truth, let me cast one mite into your great treasury, concerning that instance, just now mentioned, of the Persian kings.
The Persian kings make evidently against such as produce them for maintenance of the doctrine of persecution.
Methinks those precedents of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, are strong against New England’s tenent and practice. Those princes professedly gave free permission and bountiful encouragement to the consciences of the Jews to use and practise their religion, which religion was most eminently contrary to their own religion and their country’s worship.
Truth.I shall, sweet Peace, with more delight pass on these rough ways, from your kind acceptance and unwearied patience in attention.
In this discovery of that vast and mighty difference between that state of Israel and all other states, only to be matched and paralleled by the Christian church or Israel, I shall select some main and principal considerations concerningthat state, wherein the irreconcilable differences and disproportion may appear.
First. I shall consider the very land and country of Canaan itself, and present some considerations proving it to be a non-such.
The land of Canaan chosen by God to be the seat of the church; but under the New Testament all nations alike.
First. This land was espied out, and chosen by the Lord, out of all the countries of the world, to be the seat of his church and people, Ezek. xx. 6.
But now there is no respect of earth, of places, or countries with the Lord. So testified the Lord Jesus Christ himself to the woman of Samaria, John iv. [21,] professing that neither at that mountain, nor at Jerusalem, should men worship the Father.
While that national state of the church of the Jews remained, the tribes were bound to go up to Jerusalem to worship, Ps. cxxii. But now,in every nation, not the whole land or country as it was with Canaan,he that feareth God and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him, Acts x. 35. This then appeared in that large commission of the Lord Jesus to his first ministers:Go into all nations, and not only into Canaan, to carry tidings of mercy, &c.
Secondly. The former inhabitants thereof, seven great and mighty nations, Deut. vii. 1, were all devoted to destruction by the Lord’s own mouth, which was to be performed by the impartial hand of the children of Israel, without any sparing or showing mercy.
The inhabitants of Canaan’s land, every soul, to be put to death, that the Israelites might enjoy their possessions: not so now.
But so now it hath not pleased the Lord to devote any people to present destruction, commanding his people to kill and slay without covenant or compassion, Deut. vii. 2.
Where have emperors, kings, or generals an immediate call from God to destroy whole cities, city after city, men,women, children, old and young, as Joshua practised? Josh. vi. and x., &c.
This did Israel to these seven nations, that they themselves might succeed them in their cities, habitations, and possessions.
This only is true in a spiritual antitype, when God’s people by the sword, the two-edged sword of God’s Spirit, slay the ungodly and become heirs, yea, fellow heirs with Christ Jesus, Rom. viii. 17. God’s meek people inherit the earth, Matt. v. [5.] They mystically, like Noah, Heb. xi. 7, condemn the whole unbelieving world, both by present and future sentence, 1 Cor. vi. 2.