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to the greatest distress.* "And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the

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people that have fought against Jerusalem' (the true church of Christ)." Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away. in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth,”

The mahuzzim, or protecting gods of the popish idolatry, are fallen asleep like their ancient predecessors, whose temples and altars they have usurped; and the keen satire of Elijah against the Baalim of idolatrous Israel, applies now with equal force to the unavailing toil bestowed in holy processions, the vain exposure of the sacred reliques, and the magical incantations as uselessly offered before the shrines of the drowsy Baalim of popery. "But our help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. (Rev. xiv. 7.) He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth Israel-(the pure worshippers of Jesus) —will neither slumber nor sleep." (Fs.cxxi. 2.)

* See section xxv.

It was from this quiver that infidels have drawn their keenest shafts of sarcasm, and dipt in the venom of the rotten carcass of popish christianity, they shot their poisoned arrows against revealed religion. But when thus this mighty stumbling block is taken up out of the way, and the severe chastisement of insulted heaven, visibly distinguishable upon it, shall have vindicated the gospel from the odious charge of errors and corruption not its own, then will the blessed Jesus cease to be to his awaked people Israel "a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence." The same stone which these master builders refused, (both in the church of unbelieving Israel, and of the apostatizing christians,) shall in the eyes of both become the head of the corner, elect and precious, as before (for many ages) it had been trampled upon and buried under the rubbish of popish and jewish fables and traditions.* What Christ with his own mouth declared to the jews concerning this

*Isai. viii. 14, 15-Zech. iii. 9.-Ps. cxviii. 22.-1 Pet. i. 20; ii. 4, 6, 7, 8,—Rom. ix. 33.~Acts iv. 11.-Ephes. ii. 15, 20.-Matt. xxi. 42.-Luke xx. 18.

"who

stone, hath upon them been fulfilled; soever shall fall on this stone shall be broken." And it is now fulfilling in our eyes also upon

the church of the apostacy; "but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder." (Luke xx. 18.)

SECTION XIV.

Christ was a stone of stumbling on which the Jews fell;—he is now a rock falling on the heads of apostate Christians to their destruction.-The Apostle's caution to the primitive Christians very needful to be attended to in these days, lest by PHILANTHROPY and PHILOSOPHY, falsely so called, many be beguiled of their religion and faith.

OUR blessed Saviour, in the gospel, has conveyed to us, under various similitudes, an idea of the manner in which he will comfort and sustain his church of pure worshippers; as a vine nourishes the branches which proceed out of it, and as a building is sustained by the rock stone on which its foundations are laid. Under this latter image of a stone, in a contrary sense, as an instrument of destruc

tion, he has represented also his vengeance upon the enemies of his church, by foretelling, consistently with many other prophecies, that he would be to unbelieving Israel, a stone on which they should stumble, and fall, and be broken: but upon the corrupters of his everlasting gospel, the same stone itself should fall, with a velocity and weight tremendous and irresistible, and should grind them to powder.

This destructive effect of the overwhelming stone falling upon the victims of wrath, is the master key of that prophecy of Daniel, (ii. 34,) which will be more particularly attended to in another place. It is represented as having been cut without bands, out of the indistinct and misty bulk of futurity. It falls upon the feet of the great image still standing, but advanced to its extremity of decline, and immediate ruin ensues. The whole mighty mass of power is broken by the resistless shock, into fragments as small (in figurative comparison) "as the dust of the summer threshing floors," and the wind sweeps them away.

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