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The earth,' says Moses, was of one lip, and of one (37, dabrim), speech:' So says Solomon, thy lips-and thy (7, medabr), speech, &c., The words being the same, the meaning cannot be different. Let us therefore see how all this will quadrate with the beautiful simile of the church's lips being like a thread of scarlet. And here we must go back to historical fact, for something to begin with.

κοκκινον,

In the book of Joshua', we read of a thread of scarlet, ("nhuth eshani, Heb. OTTAρTIOV HONKIVOY, σπαρτίον LXX. our very words, totidem literis, in both), which was of great service at a most important juncture. The men that were sent from the camp of Israel, to spy out the land, had taken refuge from their pursuers in Rahab's house; and on her applying to them for a suitable return to her kindness, they bid her hang out a line of scarlet thread from her window, as the history fully tells us. This heathenish woman had a faith in Jehovah, the God of Israel, from having heard what he had done for his people; and with her lips confessed before the men 3, that Jehovah their God, was God in heaven above, and in earth beneath; thus rendering the fruit of her lips to the TRUE GOD. In this faith, she begs for herself and family to be saved from the destruction which she knew to be impending

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2

I Chap. ii,

Compare Isaiah liii. 1. Rom. x. 17.

3 Ver. 11.

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ing upon her people, and 'asks of them ‹ a true token (, auth amth, a true, certain, confi'dential sign) for her security. In answer to this, they order her to bind this line of scarlet thread in the window,' as a mark to let them know the house when they returned, and a pledge of deliverance and protection to all that should be in the house with her: Not a, or any line, but this (p

TO

, ath tequuth huth eshanieze, Heb. with both the demonstrative particles ath and eze, LXX. To σπαρτίον κοκκινον τ8το), “ this this very individual line,' probably what they themselves had by secret impulse brought with them for some such purpose, and now gave to the woman for her dependance, and for their own better distinguishing it, when they should see it again. Be in this what may, it was a thread of scarlet that was the means of salvation to Rahab, and was the happy consequence of the orthodox confession she had made with her lips, in exact conformity to the apostle's doctrine. Does not this point out to us an emblematical, at least something more than natural, connexion between the two branches of our present comparison; and may we not rationally conclude, that our inspired bard had this wonderful affair of Rahab in his eye, when he drew this resemblance? A worthy father of the church, old Irenæus of Lyons, would appear to have had some high idea of this matter.

When

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speaking of Rahab', he says, that she was saved with all her house, (fide signi coccini), by the • faith of the scarlet sign;' and applies to her what our Saviour said of the Pharisees, who (signum coccinum nullificant) made no account of the scarlet sign, that the publicans and harlots went into 'the kingdom of God before them. This same venerable writer seems to have seen something more than ordinary about what he calls the sig'num coccinum,' the scarlet sign: For, in an affair prior to this 3, about the twins in Thamar's womb, he thus descants: The scripture clearly ⚫ manifesting the people who had the scarlet sign, that is, the faith of the uncircumcision, which was first foreshewn in the patriarchs, but was after'wards withdrawn that his brother might be born; ⚫ and then came he, who first put out his hand, but was the second born, and was known by the scarlet sign upon him, which is the passion of the Just one, from the beginning prefigured in Abel, described by the prophets, and in these last times, perfected in the Son of God.' I hope it will neither be thought a digression from, nor injury done to, our subject, to quote such a respectable authority for strengthening any explication I may offer of

a

Page 270. of the Paris Edition in 1563, or Book iv. ch. 37.

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a passage, where a superficial view may perceive little mystery, but where that most curious exa'miner of all doctrines,' (as Tertullian, contra Valentinianos, calls him), found a great deal'. Indeed

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By the bye, this business between Rahab and the spies, may be what the apostle alluded to in his Epistle to the Hebrews, (though our marginal notes refer it to Abraham and to Lot, Genesis 18th and 19th chapters), where he says, chap. xiii. 2. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares; which is neither true with respect to Abraham, and is but uncertain as to Lot; nor does it carry much argument, and at the same time is but a defective rendering of the words, which are δια ταύτης γαρ ελάθον τινες ξενίσαντες żyysλovs, quidam latuerunt (placuerunt, Jerom) hospitio excipientes angelos; literally, some have been hid (have pleased) having lodged angels,' the very word which St James, ii. 25. applies to Rahab's receiving, lodging, the angels, ayyeλous, which we there read mes'sengers.' But further, the whole of this history of Rahab, Joshua ii. and vi. 22—25, taken along with Abraham's behaviour to his son, Gen. xxii. and both these transactions fully considered, in all their circumstances and consequences, would be of great service towards that strange-sounding proposal of reconciling, as it is called, the two apostles, St Paul and St James, in their seemingly different accounts of justification, by faith, or by works. For what are the works to which St James, by his two instances, attributes justification? Not the works of any law, either natural or Mosaic, to which his two examples have no relation, nor any work of virtue or morality, to which, in the common acceptation of these two big words, they are both entirely opposite, the one of them to the instinctive ties of parental affection, and the other to the so much magnified virtue of the love of our country: But works, out of the usual line indeed of philosophic recommendation, or character of natural goodness, but such as flowed from, or were founded upon, a full assurance of faith, a faith arising in the heart from outward and antecedent revelations, and manifested in conformable acts of outward obedience to these revelations so made. A due attention to these particularities would explain the one apostle's faith, and the other's works, and would let us see that St Paul does not

mean

deed he found only what the comparison of the church's lips to a thread of scarlet inust lead every inquirer, upon the apostolic warrant', to discover that, as Rahab was saved by a scarlet thread, as Noah was by the ark, and was brought into the church to be a progenitrix of both the typical and real Solomon 3; so the church's confession of her faith, (whether collectively as a body, or diffusively in her members), which is in scripture always assigned to the lips as their function, is to her the thread of scarlet, in retrospect to what it once produced, and in allusion to the gracious promise*, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' Red, to denote the requisition of blood for the remission of them: White, to indicate the purity superinduced in their stead.

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1

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely.-Comely, one should think, in our idea, is not a quite proper epithet for speech. The Hebrew,, naue, signifies desirable, decent, or becoming, descriptive of what speech the church should use. As one wrote to a friend who had praised him, that he took his praises to be not so ' much

VOL. II.

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2 B

mean the imaginary faith of the Antinomians, either ancient or modern; nor St James the splendid works of even a Socratic morality; but that they both build justification upon the same bottom, though with different views, and under different terms, in their way of argumentation.

I

I Cor. x. II.
3 St Matth. i. 5.

2 Heb. xi. 7.

4 Isaiah i. 18.

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