 family to the land of Canaan. Here God entered into Covenants with Abraham and his posterity, * to be instruments in the hands of providence for bringing about great designs in the world—that he and his posterity were to be the Church of God, and depositaries of a hope, that the Covenant limited to Abraham and his chosen seed, was to grow in the fulness of time into a blessing upon all the nations of the earth. Abraham was at this time 75 years old, and God added to the patriarchal worship the visible mark of Circumcision, as a seal of a covenant between himself and Abraham.
Yet how fit soever such a visible mark might be, to keep in remembrance the covenant between God and the family of Abraham, it was found in experience, insufficient to preserve them from the idolatrous customs of their neighbours.—Some new laws, some further constitutions of worship were to be added, or, as the family of Abraham were situated in the midst of idolaters and unrighteous ones, it was foreseen they would soon fall from the essentials of religion; and instead of preserving a right knowledge of God, of his Being, Perfections and Government,

a just sense of the reverence all men owe to him, from a firm belief of his Being, Power, Dominion, Justice, and Goodness, and an hearty concern to obey the known Will of God in all things; doing what is pleasing in his sight, seeking, and hoping their perfection and happiness, in the likeness, and in the image of God; they would, on the contrary, serve other Gods, and make their idolatry, not a matter of harmless speculation, but a fountain of the most dangerous immoralities; and therefore, as it was highly fit in it self, and well becoming the wisdom of God, he gave Moses a christianity in hieroglyphics, that is, a tabernacle, a shechinah, a priesthood, an altar, sacrifices, laws moral and ceremonial, with every constituent part of the hebrew ritual; being figures of a better shekinah, temple, priest, altar, sacrifice, revelation and blessings—figurative representations of the more perfect constitutions in the days of Messiah the King.—This was in the year 875 after the flood, and 1491 before Christ. By a ritual so becoming the wisdom of God, given for a preservative against idolatrous principles, and as a dispensation preparatory to that future heavenly religion, the Hebrew nation were guarded against the surrounding corruptions of the world, and raised up the defenders

of true religion, to preserve the knowledge and worship of the One true God.
But as mankind would not
