dered by the learned, and treated with such accuracy, that I have nothing to add. If any would have a compendious view of these things, he may consult the preface to the New Testament, drawn up, with great judgment, by our divines.

SUCH

CHAP. VI.

Of the Types.

UCH is the inexhaustible copiousness of the holy scriptures, that not only the words are significative of things, but even the things, which are first signified by the words, do likewise represent other things, which they were appointed to prefigure long before they happened. Christ principally, and Paul have informed us of this, when they apply most of the things which happened under the old dispensation, to the Messiah, and to the economy of a better testament. And indeed, if the old institutions of the Deity had not their mystical significations, they might deservedly be accounted childish, Judicrous, and unworthy of God. These are things, which not only Christians require to be granted to them, but also were acknowledged by the ancient Jews, who, besides a literal or plain meaning, sought also a mystical sense in scripture. And it was a constant and received opinion among them, that all things were mystical in the law of Moses, and therefore may be mystically explained.

II. Their mystical signification points to Christ, in his person, states, offices, and works, and in his spiritual body, the church: for Christ is the end of the law, Rom.

4. the body, or substance of the ceremonial shadows,

.

Col. ii. 17. and the centre of the prophecies, Acts x. 43. The doctrine of Christ is the key of knowledge, Luke xi. 42. without which nothing can be savingly understood in Moses and the prophets. As is apparent in the Pharasees of old, and the Socinians in our day; who, being tainted with false notions concerning the Messiah, pollute, for the most part, all the testimonies concerning the common salvation by their impure interpretations. It was very well said by the ingenious Bisterfeld, that "the Lord Jesus Christ was the spirit and soul of the whole, both of the Old and New Testament.' De scripture eminentia, § 40.

III. It is an unquestionable truth, that the Old-Testament believers, especially those who were favored with a fuller measure of the Spirit, applied themselves, with peculiar diligence, to find out the mystical meaning of the types: in which study they were very much assisted by the prophets and divinely-inspired priests. Thus David declared, that he had seen God in the sanctuary, Psal. Ixiii. 2. that is, that he had, by the figures of the Levitical service, searched, by holy meditation, into the very truth of the things. This made believers so cheerful in the acts of external worship; not that they were very much taken with those minute corporal performances, but that they beheld in them the beauty of Jehovah, and inquired in his temple, Psal. xxvii. 4. They were not put off with mere shadows, but were satisfied with the goodness of God's house, even of his holy temple; and though it was but darkly, yet they heard him speaking terrible things in righteousness, Psal. lxv. 4, 5.

IV. Though Christ and the apostles, in order to il lustrate and prove the truth of the gospel, argued from the types by divine inspi ation and the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit; yet they did not lay the stress of those arguments on their own bare authority, be

cause they were inspired (for that authority was at times called in question, and upon supposing it, all reasoning would almost seem superfluous) but on the evident demonstration of the truth to the conscience, which plainly discovered to an attentive person, that it was worthy of God, to represent such a truth by such types.

V. The strength of those arguments rests on this supposition, that God was pleased to give the church at that time, in the memorable persons of the Old Testament, to whom some remarkable things happened in an extraordinary way, and in the whole of his instituted worship, a beautiful picture, and becoming the accuracy of so great an artist, in which Christ with his mystical body might be delineated. The apostle, when he argued with the Jews in his epistles to the Galatians and Hebrews, lays this down as a fundamental truth; and having laid that foundation, directly proceeds, with a kind of divine skill, to the application of the types. For when there is any thing in the antitype resembling the type, it is justly affirmed, that God, who knows all things from the beginning, ordered the type in such a manner, that it might signify beforehand that truth, which was in the antitype. Unless we would rather maintain, that the likeness of an ingenious picture to the original, was rather the effect of chance, than of the intention of the artist; which is contrary to all

reason.

VI. It is not only lawful, but the incumbent duty of teachers, even though not inspired, to tread in this very path, and to explain, in the same method, the types of the Old Testament. For we must not think, either that an infallible authority is necessary to explain the types, or that all the types of the Old Testament are explained in the New. Not the former; for why should an infallible authority be required in interpreting the

types, rather than in interpreting the prophecies and other dark expressions in scripture? since it is manifest, that it was the will of God to instruct the church by types; and the explication of the types is now oftentimes far more easy, on account of the distinct knowledge of the antitype, than of many prophecies, which it is far more difficult to determine to what they refer. Not the latter; for why should we believe, that all the types of Christ were explained rather than all the prophecies concerning him? especially, as the apostle affirms, that he has not spoken particularly of them all, Heb. ix. 5. We are therefore to maintain, that the inspired teachers have pointed out to us the way and method, in which we ought to proceed in explaining the types, and given us a key to open those mysteries which are contained in them.

VII. Now we shall proceed in that way with safety. 1. When we accurately consider the original, even the Lord Jesus, who is now presented to our view without a vail, and from thence turn the eye of our mind to the type; then the greater, the fuller, and the more especial agreement we observe and discover between both; the greater glory we ascribe to the wisdom and truth of God, who made the type so exactly to correspond with him who is figured by it. For when we read the scriptures, we are to judge beforehand, that then only we understand them, when we discover in them a wisdom unsearchable and worthy of God.

· VIII. 2. In every thing we are to proceed with caution, fear and trembling, lest we devise mysteries out of our own imagination, and obstinately pervert to one purpose what belongs to another. We do injury to God and his word, when we would have it owing to our fanciful inventions, that God seems to have spoke or done any thing wisely. However, though there is a

measure in all things, I should think the mistake more tolerable in one, who imagines he sees Christ, where perhaps he does not discover himself, than of another, who refuses to see him, where he presents himself with sufficient evidence. For the one is an indication of a soul that loves Christ, and is very much taken up with the thoughts of him, when the very least, or perhaps no occasion is given him: the other argues an indolent soul, and slow to believe; such as discovers itself in the Socinians, and in Grotius, in other respects a great man, who generally so pervert very many passages, that they make them appear to have no manner of regard to Christ.

IX. 3. Whenever it is evident, that any person or thing is a type of Christ, we are not to imagine, that every circumstance in that person or thing is typical. For it may be that, in the same context, some things are peculiar only to the type, others only to the antitype, and others common to both: for instance, 2 Sam. vii. Solomon is proposed as a type of Christ. But it agrees to Solomon, and not to Christ, If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men, ver. 14. To Christ, and not to Solomon in its full signification, I will sta- blish the throne of his kingdom for ever, ver. 13. For the kingdom of Israel became extinct in the posterity of Solomon by the Babylonish captivity. And it is applicable to both, He shall build an house for my name, ib. We may consider other instances in the same manner.

X. 4. Sometimes it is sufficient, that there be a very faint resemblance in the type of something most excellent, in a most eminent manner, in the antitype. Nay, the more noble and divine the thing signified is, the resemblance of it must of necessity be the more slender, because of the immense distance there is between Christ