Page:A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (John Ball).djvu/137

---

---

for God was not the God of Israel but in and through the promised Messiah: whose person and offices are more fully described, whose death and resurrection is more lively typified in this expressure of the Covenant then in either of the former. Joh. 5.46.Had ye beleeved Moses (saith Christ himselfe the Author of truth) you would have beleeved me: For he wrote of me: that is, Christ was, if not the sole subject, yet the only scope of Moses his writings. And as Moses, so the Prophets that followed after him, who wrote by the same Spirit, and under that expression of the Covenant, did speake of Christ more fully and plainly then he had done before. In the first promise it was revealed, that the Messiah should be the seed of the woman, to Abraham it was made known, that he should be of his seed: but in the writings of Moses we learne, that he was to be both God and man, or that God was to be incarnate, and to have his conversation amongst men, after a more peculiar manner then in the ancient times of the world he had. The promise runs thus, Exod. 29.45,46And I will dwell amongst the children of Israel, and will be their God, and they shall know that I am the Lord their God, that brought them forth out of the Land of Egypt, that I may dwell amongst them: I am the Lord their God. The same promise is renewed or repeated, Lev. 26.11,
12,13.
Ezek. 37.26,
27,28And I will set my Tabernacle amongst you, and my soule shall not abhorre you, and I will walke among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people. The Chaldee translateth the first place, I will settle my habitation (or divine presence) amongst the sonnes of Israel. And where in the Hebrew it is, I will dwell in the midst of the sons of Israel. Onkelos and Jonathan reade it, I will place my Divinity. But what Divinity? whether the holy Spirit, or rather the Word, as we reade, Joh. 1.14.The Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us; when Christ took our nature upon him, and came and dwelt amongst his own, then was this promise punctually fulfilled. Or if it be referred to the habitation of God by his Spirit amongst the spirituall seed of Abraham, as we find the word often used. Rom. 8. 2.   2 Cor. 6. 19.   2 Tim. 1. 14. Ephes. 3. 17. Jam. 4. 5.   2 Cor. 12. then it implieth the incarnation of Christ, and his dwelling amongst the Jewes, because that was to goe before the plentifull habitation of the Spirit in the hearts of the faithfull. And if the Evangelists words have not reference to the forecited places, they do allude to a passage in the Prophet Zachary, whence they may be interpreted. Zech. 2.10,
11,12.Sing and rejoyce, O daughter of Sion, forlo,