Jones' Lectures No. 7

HISTORICAL FIGURES

William A. Jones
1801

The Theological, Philosophical and Miscellaneous Works of the Rev. William  Jones
                   LECTURE  VII   HISTORICAL FIGURES OF THE SCRIPTURES CONTINUED

In the preceding Lecture, we have seen how the dangers of the Christian warfare are set before us, in the history of the Militant State of the Jewish Church in its translation from Egypt to Canaan.  St. Paul hath expressly taught us, to consider that history as prophetical of our own situation as Christians; and hath shewed how it is to be applied as an admonition or warning to us, that we may not fall after the same example of unbelief.  We have seen how the people who have been baptized under Moses, and had passed through the Red Sea, afterwards preferred the slavery of Egypt to the service of God in the wilderness; becoming weary of His ways, and despising the better for love of the worse.      

But we followed them only on a part of their journey.  Other circumstances are yet behind, from which the like instruction is to be gathered: and in treating of them, I shall observe the same order as the apostle hath done in the 10th chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, where he warns us not to be idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.  This refers us to the occasion of their making a golden calf, and worshipping it with the riotous mirth of idolaters; which shewed that they had forsaken the true object of their worship, and had forgotten the design of their redemption from the bondage of Egypt.  While Moses was in conference with God upon the mount, their folly had taken up an opinion, that he would not return to them; and consequently, that they might fall into licentiousness, without the fear of being called to an account: So they danced before a golden calf, and gave themselves up to eating and drinking and playing, as if they had totally forgotten the design of their journey through the wilderness. 

Are these the people whom God, with so mighty a hand, had lately rescued from the tyranny of Pharaoh?  Are these the people who had seen the waters of the sea divided, to save them and destroy their enemies?  Who had followed a cloud, which led them by day, and gave light to them by night?  And had they so soon forgotten all these wonders, and fallen into the senseless mirth of idolatry?  Strange it is! But such was the fact.  And now let us observe the consequence.  Moses, whom they had forgotten, descends from the mount when they had little expected him; he surprises them in the midst of their sin, and sends the Levites, armed, as his ministers, to execute vengeance; who smote with the sword from one side of the camp to the other, and there fell some thousands of the people.  Our Saviour, in one of his discourses, hath applied this history as an admonition to those careless sinners, who live in pleasure, and are unmindful of Him who will shortly return to be their Judge:  But if that evil servant shall say in his heart, my Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and will cut him in sunder, and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers (1).  This brings the history home to ourselves.  As Moses for a time left the people in the wilderness, so hath our Leader left us, and he is now up with God on the holy mount. 

In this interval, there are Christians (so called) who wot not what is become of him, and make a profane use of his absence; setting up this world, in some form or other, as their idol; and devoting themselves to the worship of it.  Whatever the object may be, which any man has substituted in the place of God, that object is to him what the calf was to the Hebrews.  How many are there who spend their lives in the dance of pleasure, as if they had been sent hither for no other purpose!  Others devote themselves to honours and preferments; and, to accomplish their designs, affect popularity, and worship the beasts of the people.  Wealth is the object of others; and theirs is a calf of gold.  The covetous serve mammon the god of riches; and the sin of covetousness is expressly called by the name of Idolatry (2). 

Are these the people of God?  Are these they, who were baptized into the name of Jesus Christ as dead unto sin and alive unto righteousness?   Are these the children of Abraham; followers of them who through faith and patience obtained the promises?  Merciful God, what a transformation is this!  Are they not rather of those unprofitable servants, whom the Lord at his return from the mount shall surprise and judge as hypocrites and unbelievers?       

We have another example of our danger from the case of the Israelites, who fell into sin from evil communications and bad company.  There was a mixed multitude of strolling Egyptians and disorderly people who went up with the Hebrews out of Egypt, and attended their camp from motives of curiosity and beggary.  These are said to have fallen a lusting, and to have propagated their evil inclinations among the congregation; who, led by their example, provoked God with their discontent and murmurings.  The Christian church hath always been attended by a like unprincipled multitude of heretics, sensualists, enthusiasts, sectaries, and even atheists; men, who being discontented with the ways and doctrines of the Christian society, have recommended and spread their own evil opinions, and occasioned multitudes to fall away.  A defection from the doctrines of Christianity is the natural consequence of a departure from the worship and sacraments and authority of the Church.  Some of the earliest instances of blasphemy against the doctrine of the Blessed trinity, were found among ignorant people in those times of confusion and rebellion, when a mixt multitude of more than sixty different sects arose even to the astonishment of those who first began the separation (3).  But afterwards the same error was adopted by men of higher pretensions to learning, who have found too many followers; till the times have at length produced a new generation of opinionists, who assume to themselves, and attribute to one another, the honours of confession and martyrdom, for asserting the blasphemy of Socinus against the church and the kingdom of Christ, with the same boldness as the saints, in the primitive times, asserted the doctrines of the gospel against the heathen powers and the kingdom of Satan.  But boldness without truth will never make a Christian confessor: and if a man injures himself for the love of error, he is not a martyr but a suicide.             

They who are acquainted with the world, and the present state of religion and literature, must have observed, that heresy, schism, and the new philosophy of the Deists, with their numerous adherents, form a mixed multitude, which are always hovering about the Christian camp, and never fail to corrupt it. They are now boasting of their success, and threaten to overwhelm this church in a very short time with a Deluge of Unitarianism, that is, the Mahometan Infidelity (4).      

The destruction of three and twenty thousand was occasioned by the Israelites associating with the people of Midian, who invited them to the feasts of their idols; in consequence of which, they fell into shameless fornication after  the manner of the Heathens.  And as there were wicked Midianites and Moabites into the neighborhood of the camp, so is there a wicked world always near at hand, ready to invite and seduce the servants of God by its ensnaring customs and diversions.  To mix with the world on all occasions, and not be corrupted by its ways, is almost as unlikely, as that the Hebrews should go to an idol feast with the Midianites, and not be the worse for it.  What is the natural tendency of many, and even the design of some public diversions tolerated among Christians, but to corrupt youth and give opportunities to vice?  How are most of the scenes of public diversions crowded with the daughters of Midian, who are well aware, that what is there to be seen and heard will seldom fail to encourage the vicious, and betray some of the innocent, into their snares!  Wherever any public meetings have this tendency to corrupt the manners, we may call them by what names we please, but they are as Moab and Midian, if they are the enemies of Christian virtue.      

Balak, the king of the Moabites, hated the camp of Israel, and bribed Balaam, a prophet, to curse them.  Just thus doth the world hate the church, and is never happier than when it can hire the ministers of the church to turn against it and betray its interests.  But it can no more succeed by all its curses than the wicked Balak could: it must seduce Christians to sin, and then it prevails; not by its own power, but by tempting the church to provoke the anger of God.  When Balaam found that he could prevail nothing by his sacrifices and enchantments, then he gave counsel to Balak to corrupt the people of the camp with fornication; and that soon answered the purpose.      

But now we are to learn another lesson, from the example of those who are said to have tempted Christ with their impatience under the ways of his providence.  When the people expected to see and end of their journeyings, it pleased God still to lead them round about; but being weary of this unsettled life, we are told, that the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way (5): and, to punish their impatience on this occasion, fiery serpents were sent to destroy them.  But when Moses prayed for them, he was directed to place a serpent on a pole (6), and when they who were bitten looked up to it, they were saved from death.  Our Saviour hath applied this to the lifting up of himself upon the cross, where the serpent that hath the power of death, was to be vanquished; that they who are wounded by sin, and in danger of eternal death, may look up to him and live.  What was the offence of the people?  It was impatience.  What was their punishment?  They were delivered to the power of the destroyer.  What was the remedy?  They were directed to look up to a figure of the cross.  And where should the impatient now look up, but to Jesus the author and finisher of their faith; that great example of patient suffering, who for their sakes endured the cross and despised the shame of it.  If we are tempted to be weary and faint in your minds, when the Providence of God is leading us by some tedious and disagreeable way against our will, then we are to look up to this pattern of patience, and to consider, how he took the painful way of the cross, and submitted his own will to the will of God.  With this example before us, let us ask ourselves, whether we have anything to complain of; we who ought to have been there instead of him!  In his death we see the victory that overcometh the world.  For the joy that was set before him, he waited till the great work of our salvation was finished: and we are to wait in like manner, till all the designs of Providence are accomplished in us; for we can inherit the promises on no other condition: He that endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved.       

But salvation, such as God hath promised, is not an object to all men.  Some have no opinion of it; as there were those amongst the people in the wilderness, who thought scorn of that pleasant land to which they were going.  When the spies who were sent to view the land of Canaan, made their report of it, and brought back with them some of its fruits, they differed very much in their accounts.  They who proved faithful and told the truth, said it was an exceeding good land, flowing with milk and honey; and that they were well able, with god on their side, to take possession of it, and overcome the inhabitants, whose defence was departed from them.  Others brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched: They described it as a land which ate up, that is, starved its inhabitants; and that these were men of a gigantic stature, to whom ordinary men were but as grasshoppers.  This latter report found too much credit: and the congregation was so discouraged and terrified by it, that they lift up their voices and wept; and they murmured against Moses and Aaron for bringing them into these insuperable difficulties, and even determined to make them another captain and go back.  This is the act of unbelief for which they were doomed to fall in the wilderness, without being permitted to see that land which they would take no pains to win.  

     Such is the case of those fearful minds and faint hearts, which say there is a lion in the way, and magnify all the difficulties of the Christian warfare.  The heavenly land, as they conceive it, and as they hear from people like themselves, is not a place that would make them happy.  Besides there are such temptations in the way as no man can resist.  Vice is strong, and nature is weak.  The gospel prescribes a way of life that would starve people, and take away all their comfort.  Therefore when all things are considered, nothing is to be done, but to give up the cause, and go back to the opinions and ways of the children of this world.        

If I may give you my own sentiment, I do not suppose there is a sin upon earth more hateful to God, than this of undervaluing his promises, distrusting his protection, and making unjust representations either of his religion itself, or of the rewards of it; as if his service were hard, or the end of it not worth attaining. This I can tell you, that such people are often made more miserable, and suffer worse agitations of mind from disappointments in the way of their own chusing, than the most abstracted saint ever suffered from the practice of self-denial in the way of godliness.  For we may lay it down as a certain rule, that they who have not faith to see the value of the other world, have not the wit to use this properly: and no man need wish his worst enemy more wretched than the abuse of this world will make him.  But, on the contrary, what words can describe the blessedness of him, who, depending on the promises of God, conquers the difficulties of life, and hath hope in his death!  Such an hope as is signified by the divine Psalmist, in words much to our present purpose – I should utterly have fainted, but that I believed verily to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.  As if he had said, "I believe the report concerning that good land, to the possession of which we are journeying; I know the value of it, and that the Lord himself is my defence by the way; and so my heart hath not failed me: therefore I give the same advice to all, Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: he who led Joshua to victory in the promised land, shall bring down the walls of the mighty, and support thee against all that appears gigantic and terrible in the way of salvation."  St. Paul, having pointed out to us, and applied all these figures as examples to us under the gospel, draws this weighty moral from the history of our fathers who journeyed in the wilderness: "Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.  There hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will, with the temptation also, make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it." (7)  This is the doctrine we are to learn from their history.  He that standeth may now fall through unbelief, as they did: he that has been brought out of Egypt, may fall in the wilderness; therefore let us pass the time of our sojourning here in fear.  But then, as God is still with us, we are never to be discouraged in the time of trial, nor to doubt of his protection.  If there is a sea on one side, and a host of Egyptians on the other, and there seems no way to escape, the waters shall be divided, and the Egyptians shall be overthrown.  If there is neither bread nor water in appearance, some improbable causes shall give us a supply of both: some flinty stone shall become a springing well, and the heavens above shall give us meat enough.  Then for the sickness of the soul, we have the remedy of the cross; and against the gigantic race of Anak, a defender who will never leave us nor forsake us: however great and formidable the enemies of the Christian may appear, Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world.     

    Though it is the design of these Lectures rather to interpret the scripture than to apply it; yet we are to consider the application as the end, and the interpretation as the means: therefore I cannot help indulging myself sometimes in dwelling upon the moral part, which is the most edifying of all.  The history of the church in the wilderness is figurative, and we have learned what it signifies: but what good will this knowledge do us, if there is no counsel with it?  What shall we gain by seeing how men were lost, unless we take advice from thence and learn how we may be saved?  I therefore do not spare, when occasion offers, to add to my interpretations such spiritual advice as arises out of them.  The length and labour of my undertaking is the greater upon this account; but I hope your profit will be greater in proportion.  The church that went from Egypt to Canaan gives us an example of everything that can happen to the Christian church from the beginning of it even to the end of the world: therefore no historical figure of the scripture is of more importance to us than this journey of the Hebrews through the wilderness: and I ought not yet to lay it aside.  For there are two particulars remaining, which are of great signification; the one is the rebellion of Corah, and the other is the settlement of the church in Canaan, a land of the gentiles.      

St. Jude, in his epistle concerning the corruption of the church, speaks of some who perished in the gainsaying of Core: therefore this same evil which happened in the church of Moses, is to be found in the Church of Christ, and it behoves us to consider what it was.  Corah and his company had no dispute about the object or form of divine worship: they questioned none of the doctrines of the law; they rose up against the persons of Moses and Aaron; that is, against the civil and ecclesiastical authority; contending that themselves and all the congregation had an equal right; that Moses and Aaron had taken too much upon themselves; and by exercising an usurped authority were abusing and making fools of the people.  This was their sin, and they maintained it to the last, and perished in it.  It was the dispute of popular power against the divine authority: and wherever the like pretensions are avowed by Christians, and the same arguments used in support of them, there we see the gainsaying of Corah.  It is a lamentable circumstance attending this sin, that it inspires great boldness and obstinacy, such as we read of in Corah and his party.  Other sinners are apt to be ashamed of themselves; but these never; because they assert their own sanctity in the act of their disobedience.  When they set up human right against that which is by God's appointment; the more proud and obstinate they are, the more colour they seem to give to their pretensions.  It is one reason why rebellion was so severely punished in Corah, and is now so severely threatened in the New Testament, that men are never known to repent of it.  In vain did Moses exclaim and remonstrate against the wickedness of Corah: he and all his party preserved the same good opinion of themselves, and persisted in it to the last; even appealing to God himself, though they were risen up against God's ministers; till the earth opened; and the fire devoured them.      

 From this example of Corah, we are to learn, that God considers all opposition against lawful authority, as a sin against himself.  He declares that rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry (8): the meaning of which, as it stands in the book of Samuel, is this; that if a man were a Jew, and yet a rebel, he might as well be a heathen: if he were too stubborn to submit to the ordinances of God, he might as well be a sorcerer, or serve idols.  And it is worthy of observation, that this severe sentence against is against Saul, a king, who usurped the authority of the priesthood, and pleaded a godly reason for it.  But so jealous is God, for the wisest ends, upon this subject, that no dignity of person, no appearance of reason, is admitted in excuse for the sin of rebellion.  We therefore rightly pray in the Liturgy of the Church of England, that God would deliver us from rebellion in the state and schism in the Church; and in order to this, we should also pray, that he would deliver us from the principles out of which they proceed; for none of our reasonings will prevail in this case.  For my own part, I must confess, that if there be any man who is so far infatuated as to have persuaded himself that God is no proprietor of power in the world of his own making and governing, and that all men are born to a state of equality; I would no more reason with that man, than I would preach temperance to a swine, or honesty to a wolf.  I would leave him to himself, and turn toward those who have not yet received the infection.      

The settlement of the church of the Hebrews in Canaan, a land of the Heathens, is the last article I am to explain, as prefigurative of the Christian church.  It is mentioned as such in the apology of St. Stephen against the Jews:  Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus (i.e. Joshua) into the possession of the gentiles, whom God drove out before the face of our fathers. – The doctrine, of all others most unacceptable and odious to a Jew, was this of the translation of the tabernacle of God to the gentiles.  St. Stephen therefore does not literally affirm it, but covertly, and, as a prophet should do, under the shadow of that ancient history which was intended to foreshew it.  The Jewish church derived much danger from its situation among the Canaanites; for though God had driven them out as possessors, and established his own people in their land, he left some of the former possessors to be thorns in their sides for trial and punishment: and their history shews how often they were ensnared by the abominable doctrines of idolatry, until the captivity of Babylon was the reward of their apostacy.      

 Wonderful was the settlement of the Jews in Canaan, with the fall of Jericho, and the victories of the people of God against all the armaments and confederacies of their enemies.  But not less wonderful was the establishment of Christianity amongst the Gentiles.  Heathenism was in as full and quiet possession of the world and its empire at the coming of Christ, as the Canaanites were in their own land when Joshua entered it.  But the voice of the gospel preached by a few fishermen from among the Jews, a people held in the utmost contempt by the whole heathen world, soon cast down all the highest fences of Satan's kingdom, as the walls of Jericho fell down at the sound of ram's horns blown by priests.  As the Hebrews in the progress of their victories were exhorted to fear nothing, remembering how Pharaoh had been subdued in Egypt; so ought Christians to remember daily, how God reduced the power of Satan all over the heathen world, till his temples were destroyed, and the churches of Christ were placed upon their ruins.        

But then, as there was a remnant of the Canaanites, to whom the people were frequently joining themselves in marriage, and consequently relapsing into idolatry, according to that of the Psalmist – They did not destroy the nations concerning whom the Lord commanded them, but were mingled among the heathen and learned their works, and they served their idols, which were a snare unto them:  so the works of heathen authors, with the fables of their false gods, the abominable rites of their religion, and the obscenity and immorality of their practices, are in like manner remaining among Christians; and it has been the custom for ages, all over Europe, to communicate the rudiments of languages and learning to young minds from heathen books, without due care to caution them against imbibing heathen principles; by which thousands of minds are corrupted, and through early prejudice rendered incapable of understanding the value of truth, and the abominable nature of heathen error.  How frequently are heathen moralists applied to, when the finest rules of human prudence for the conduct of life are to be found in the scripture.  But to go to the heathen for divinity, as some authors do, is intolerable.  They blow out the candle of revelation, and then go raking into the embers of paganism to light it again.  Many good and learned men, of the first ability and taste, have observed and lamented the bondage we are under to heathen modes of education: but custom is a tyrant which hears no reason.  However, there can be no harm, and I hope there will be no offence, in praying that God will enable us to correct all our errors from the history of past miscarriages.  This is the great use we are to make of our present subject.  The dangers to the souls of men are the same in all ages; and their errors are the same for sense, however they may differ in form: so that we cannot be surprised and ensnared by any temptation that comes upon the church, if we look to the things that are past. 

FOOTNOTES TO LECTURE VII.

(1) Luke xii. 44.

(2) The learned Mr. Parkhurst, in his Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, gives very good reasons why we ought rather here to understand the sin of unlawful lusts, as in that other expression, whose God is their belly.  See under the word …. .

(3) An authentic and very curious account of the errors and blasphemies of that time, (two years before the death of the king) was published in a Treatise, entitled, Gangrana, by Thomas Edwards, Presbyterian minister: of which, see part 1. p.32, 110.  But see also Burnett's History of the Reformation, An. 1549, vol. 2., p. 111, 112

(4) See Priestley's Sermon on Free Enquiry

(5) Numbers xxi. 4.

(6) In the heathen Mythology, a serpent, twisted about a stick, is the emblem of health, and the ensign of Esculapius.

(7) 1st Corinthians x. 12, 13.

(8) 1st Samuel xv. 23.    

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