presented by earthly resemblances of the same kind, where the context determines the sense, and shews what we are to understand by fruitful fields, rivers of water, streams in the desert, showers of rain, clean grain, pure provender, forests clapping their hands, hills singing, cattle rejoicing, &c. See Isaiah vii. xxxi. xxxv. lv. and John vii. 38. Acts ii. 18. One might argue strongly,

4thly, For the confirmation of this doctrine, from the manifest impiety and absurdity (as would appear from the face of the whole Word of God) of applying numberless passages in the Psalms to David, or any man whom God ever created, except to the man Christ Jesus alone, though there had been no direct nor indirect application of them to him besides the general tenor of the Scriptures, which is the only analogy of faith or form of sound words which the church of Christ can allow. What mere creature that ever dwelt in flesh and blood could lift up its mouth, and say to Jehovah, glorying in itself and its own deserts, Judge me, and try meExamine heart and reins, O God-Preserve me, because I am holy-Thou wilt prolong my life from generation to generation.-Let them shout for joy who love my righteousness • —The world is dissolved; but I hold up the pillars thereof ?? How do these things agree to any but the holy One of God, of whose years there shall be no end? Who upholdeth all things by the word of his power; who obtained through his own righteousness power over all flesh, that

he might give eternal life to as many as the Father hath given him. If with this key we open the i. and cxix. Psalms, we will be admitted into the secrets of a perfect heart; and behold our Lord made under the law, exercised, panting and wrestling under the curse, till at length, through his own obedience, he attain to the everlasting joy, his own due reward, which he gives to his people who rejoice and delight with him in all the perfection of the law only as fulfilled in his blood.

To pursue this important point through) all the variety of examples which might be adduced, till they amounted to a full and particular proof with regard to every single Psalm, would make a considerable volume of itself: and good service it would be for any one who had time and ability equal to the task; that there might remain no shadow of hesitation, where the scrip tures, were spiritual things compared with spiri tual, would appear to speak so plain.

Those directing passages in the Psalms may be considered as so many erected poles in the corners of a highway, ascertaining, not only that those remarkable places where they stand are in the course thereof, but also all the intermediate spaces from one to another. So that, it is apprehended, the whole number of the Psalms are comprised in this scheme of interpretation. For we have no other direction left us whereby we may interpret them; seeing it is manifest, there is not a Psalm, or portion of a Psalm, applied

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in the whole New Testament as expressive of David's state, but all of Christ's, who is the way, the truth, and the life; so that, if we expound any thing in the Psalms as relating to David, we do it without his leave who hath the keys of the house of David. It would not, perhaps, be much beyond the fact, if it were affirmed, that there are more references to the Psalms as speaking of Christ, than to the whole writings of Moses and the prophets taken together.

How careful are the apostles to caution their hearers to beware of thinking of David at all as the person spoken of in the Psalms! See Acts ii. and Acts xiii. The manner of their quotations is also remarkable, having foreseen, through the Spirit, no doubt, the abuse that was to happen of that book. Thus they say, David being a prophet saith-David. in Spirit saith-God saith in David-Christ saith in David-the Ho ly Ghost saith by the mouth of David; but more frequently, when any quotation is brought from the Psalms, David is not mentioned at all, but only Christ speaking in David; thus, Christ ⚫ saith when he cometh into the world-It is ⚫ written, I will confess to thee among the na❝tions-I believed, therefore have I spoken."

It was owing to the mistakes the Jews enter. tained about the Psalms, and other lively oracles which were delivered to them, that they rejected and crucified the Lord, even because he interpreted them in another manner than they and yet the guilt and danger of misinterpreting them

now, must be greater than theirs, according to our greater proportion of light: for as the light, so is the condemnation to them that walk in dark

ness

Now it may be proper to consider a few of the most common objections which are brought against this method of interpreting the Psalms; some of them frivolous enough, it must be confessed, but not the less insisted upon because of that circumstance, and therefore, not the less eeding, however little deserving, to be answered. Objection 1. If your scheme must hold, what shall become of all those books, devotional, prac

and trying, and of preachings innumerable, tures and lecture-books, which are full, and

of them full of nothing else but of David's exercises and experiences? What a foolsure in particular, would the most of our

d treatises on regeneration, and cases ace make, if you were to deny them the use of their own grand magazine of soul-postures, wherewith they tell us visual and Asaph, were exercised in Moreover, what would you do with the top of the Psalm in every present almost all of them as des man's own state?

the

We have nothing to do with them All you have any more, if they be how the ith, but against it? What shall bocom then that As the chief priests said when he came and told them, he had

to Juds

sinned in betraying innocent blood, See thou to ⚫ that.' So let every man see to his own work. And whether it be better to give ear to the fond imaginations of men, all brim-full of their own sense, or to the infallible dictates of the Holy Ghost concerning his own meaning, let the objector judge. But who are you to oppose so many? Ans. And who are many enow to oppose the Holy Ghost? Do we maintain any thing about the Psalms on our own authority?

Obj. 2. Many of the Psalms have a title shewing the occasion of their being composed, which title being a part of the inspired text, plainly determines them to the very occasion there mentioned, from which occasion and its circumstances, as to the prophet's state, you must seek the meaning of those Psalms.

Ans. If you allow the text to be inspired, is it to be imagined the Holy Spirit would inspire men to utter their own experiences, and never once give the least hint of the matter in all the New-Testament revelation, where alone we are commanded to look for the interpretation of all the foregoing inspirations? But waving this,. and also that controversy, whether the title be indeed a part of the text, and not rather, like the dates of some of the Epistles, only a note perhaps of some ancient commentator; it is alledged, that the title, however true and express, can never more or less determine the sense of the Psalm to the occurrences therein mentioned, more than the date of a letter can determine the