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out." "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." "Deny thyself, take up thy cross,and follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven!" If the answer be, "We cannot comply with these things; our hearts are too hard; advise us to any thing else, and we will hearken;" if this, or something like it, I say, should be the answer, the servant of God, having warned them, that what they call the incapacity, is no other than a wicked aversion to God and goodness; that they judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life; and that their blood will be upon their own heads; he must there leave them. His soul may weep in secret places for them; but it is at his peril to compromise the matter. If, seeing they cannot find in their hearts to comply with the invitations of the Gospel, he should offer any directions which imply that their inability is of such a kind as to afford them an excuse; any directions which imply that it is not their immediate duty to repent and turn to God by Jesus Christ; any directions which may descend within the compass of their inclinations; let him look to it: they may be pleased with his advice, and comply with it, and, considering it is about the whole that can reasonably be expected of them in their present circumstances, they may be very easy; and persisting in such a spirit, they may die in it, and perish for ever; but their blood will surely be required at his hand!

I am, my dear friend, your's very affectionately,

GAIUS.

COMMENTARY ON GEN. iii. 22.

Extracted from the late Rev. R. Riccaltoun's Works.

REV. SIR,

To the Editor.

Lately perusing the Works of the late Rev. Robert Riccaltoun, of Hobkirk, in Scotland, the following Comment, on a very important passage of Scripture, very forcibly struck my mind; and as it may tend to throw light upon that part of the word of God, should be glad to see it inserted in your valuable work.

I am, Sir, yours, &c.

NEREUS.

"FROM the account we have of the manner in which Man was driven out of Paradise, it appears rather to have been a work of mercy than judgment. The speech is introduced with, "Behold; the man is become as one of us;" which has more of the air of compassion than irony, as some have construed it; and if the following words are justly rendered, it was an act of real kindness, that the man might not fall again into the same snare, and run into a new instance of rebellion, by attempting to eat of the tree of life that he might evade the sentence appointing him to return to the dust from which he was taken. For securing against such a pernicious event, a guard of angels was set, to keep him out.

"But indeed the original words of Moses will, without any violence done them, admit of a very different construction. It is well known, that the tree of life, from the beginning to the end of the record, is made use of, to signify what the tree which bore that name in Paradise, was but a figure or emblem of, viz. the means which God hath chosen to convey eternal life to dead sinners of mankind. It is observed by these skilled in

the language, that the particle which we render lest, and which gives the turn to the whole sentence, may be properly rendered, so as to put man in a possibility of recovering life, as was done by the intimation already made in the serpent's curse; and what follows of setting up the cherubims in the east of the garden, seems, all things considered, to determine their intention to be, not to keep man from, but to guide him into, the way of the tree of life. This will appear more than probable, when we reflect on the purpose which the cherubims answered in the tabernacle and temple: they were appendages of the mercy-seat, and Jehovah inhabited them, or dwelt between them. It was, without all question, an emblematic exhibition of the God of grace dwelling among the people for whom Moses wrote, who, for any thing that appears, had no other notion of cherubim; and when they were told of God's having placed them on the east of Eden, they could not help concluding, that he had pitched on that as the place in which he chose to manifest himself, and where the worshippers were to make their approaches to him; which is yet further confirmed by this, that we find the face or faces of Jehovah, mentioned as some place from whence Cain was, or at least was afraid of being driven What is added of a flaming sword, in our translation, is only fire, and another word which signifies any weapon of slaughter; which may possibly be a short hint of the institution of the sacrifice to be offered there; and I believe, on the whole, it will be found very nearly to resemble the prophet Ezekiel's fire infolding itself in his vision of the glory of God in the cherubim, rather than a flaming sword, turning every VOL. III.

out.

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way at one part of the garden, while all the rest was left open."-Vol. ii. pp. 88, 89, 90.

THE BRAND PLUCKED OUT OF THE FIRE.

Zech. iii. 2. Is not this a Brand plucked out of the Fire?

THIS literally designs Joshua, the high priest, charged by the adversary with unfitness for his sacred office, on account of his past conduct in Babylon. Satan's pretence is the want of holiness in the accused, while he only means to promote his own infernal designs, by preventing Joshua from going on in his work. The devil is rebuked by the Advocate with the Father. When Joshua was in Babylon, he might have been under temptation, and possibly, in some degree, complied, either from interest or fear, in worshipping fire, the Chaldean god. He was there in the furnace of affliction: he was there as a sinner deserving hell-fire. Is he not, Satan, a brand plucked from these fires? The justified and sanctified state of this monument of grace is vindicated in the inquiry.

The subject of this fire is the poor sinner, a brand; a piece of burning wood; not only lifeless, as separated from the tree, but in the fire, and about to be consumed. By sin we are only fit fuel for the fire of Divine wrath, cast forth as an abominable branch.* Satan, by sin, has set the brands on fire. Our own sinful state is fearful, and as dangerous to others as the foxes of Samson were to the fields of the Philistines; and to ourselves, as those whom the prophet represents as Isa. xiv. 16.

"smoking fire-brands," in danger of consuming and being consumed.*

2. The fire is sin; the spark is our own corruption: the enemy has fanned the flame, and the fire has broken out, it has raged, and, in many instances, burned to the lowest hell. We are guilty of ungrateful rebellion against God; and anger against our fellow men, and the unsinning brutes; and our tongues are often “set on fire of hell," as James expresses it. Our various lusts are as fires kindling in our hearts, and only to be extinguished by the waters of the sanctuary: Herod's lust and Balaam's ambition consumed them. Fire gives exquisite pain: the dead "cannot feel, though they are set on fire round about;"+ but the time will come when the worm will gnaw, and the conscience will be recovered to its life, and its fearful stings will be deeply felt,

Fire converts all inflammable matter into its own nature, till the subject is altogether like itself. Sin has changed the mind into enmity itself against God.‡

The fire consumes every thing on which it preys, our hopes suffer. The godly are often tried in their confidence; they find it difficult to maintain their ground against all they meet with: a sense of past sins, and present imperfections, tries their hopes.

They suffer in their comforts: they are scorched, withered, and dried up; "His mercy is clean gone for ever; he will be favorable no more."

Their prospects are darkened by the clouds of smoke from this fire of sin: while good men feel this in a de gree, the wicked experience it in the fullest sense.

* Judges xv. 45. Isai. vii. 4. Pro. xxvi. 28. Amos iv. 11.

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