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reigned king in Eden, all the creatures were subject to him, and lived at unity among themselves. Rebellion and discord, driven down from heaven to hell by the all-conquering sword of Michael, were then confined to their proper place. They had not, as yet, approached the gates of Paradise, or found their way into the new world. Man was at peace with God, and therefore the creation was at peace with man; and even brutes did not bite and devour one another. The enmity afterwards introduced by sin subsided, in the case before us, for a season; the sovereignty over the creatures originally vested in Adam, the father of the world, was put into the hands of Noah the restorer of it, and the halcyon days of Eden came over again in the ark. Thus ought it to be in that other ark, the Christian church, built by the bessed Jesus for the salvation of all, whether Jews or Gentiles. The enmity subsisting between these was to be abolished, and to cease for ever, the moment they entered the holy doors of the sanctuary by the sacrament of baptism. What God had once cleansed by the washing of regeneration was no longer to be called common or unclean, as St. Peter was 'admonished by the vision of the mystic sheet, in which, as in the ark, were all manner of four-footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air, met together, without any difference or distinction; in order to convince him, that the Gentiles, whose tempers and dispositions in their state of heathenism were represented by the instincts,

P Acts x. 12.

properties, and qualities of the wild and unclean creatures, were now taken into the ark of the church, and that therefore he was not from henceforth to call any man common or uncleano. God is no respecter of persons, and in Christ Jesus there is no distinction of age or nation, sex or condition. All who enter into the church, therefore, should put off the prejudices and prepossessions, the enmities and animosities against each other, arising from these and the like causes, and live quietly and peaceably together in their habitations. That such an event as this was to take place Isaiah foretold in terms literally descriptive of the state of things in the ark.-The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the or. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain'. This prophecy was fulfilled in the early days of the church, when Christians were every where known by the blessed change wrought in their tempers, and by the love they bare to each other: when, coming to the ark at the call of the true Noah, they forgot their natura] fierceness, intemperance, lust, and every other savage and unclean disposition, and became new creatures, conformed, in meekness, to the Lamb of God, in pu

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rity, to the holy Dove. But if this be CHRISTIANITY, whither, ah, whither must we go to find it! Shall we find it among the numberless armies of most Christian, most Catholic, most Apostolic, and Faith-defending kings, slaughtering one another, by thousands and ten thousands, in the field of battle? Shall we find it in courts, or in cities, among clergy, or laity, supplanting and overreaching each other for a larger share of the pleasures and gratifications of sense, which preferment and gold are to put them in possession of? When we have looked abroad for it, should we have looked in vain, let us look into our own hearts, and see if we can find it there. If we can, happy are we. If otherwise, let us remember, that in the same hand are the hearts of men and the instincts of animals. He who caused lions and oxen, wolves and lambs, to live quietly and lovingly together in the ark, he it is who maketh men to be of one mind in an house; who maketh the new Jerusalem to be a city at unity with itself; who maketh a family a little model of that city; and fashioneth a heart to the still more minute resemblance of such a family, where all is obedience, and peace, and love.

AN APOLOGY

FOR

CERTAIN GENTLEMEN

IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

ASPERSED IN

A LATE ANONYMOUS PAMPHLET:

WITH

A short POSTSCRIPT concerning another Pamphlet, lately published by the Rev. Mr. HEATHCOTE.

EXODUS, XX. 16.

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

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