Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God

2. The Jews had this privilege granted them above other Nations to have a clearer Revelation of God. God separated them from all the World to honour them with the depositum of his Oracles. Rom. 3.2. To them were committed the Oracles of God. In which regard all other Nations are said to be without God, as being destitute of so great a privilege, Eph. 2.12. The Spirit blew in Canaan, when the Lands about it felt not the saving breath of it. He hath not dealt so with any Nation, and as for his Judgments they have not known them. Psal. 147.20. The rest had no warnings from the Prophets, no dictates from Heaven, but what they had by the light of Nature, the view of the works of Creation, and the Administration of Providence, and what remained among them of some ancient Traditions derived from Noah, which in tract of time were much defaced. We read but of one Jonah sent to Nineveh, but frequent Alarms to the Israelites by a multitude of Prophets commissioned by God. 'Tis true, the door of the Jewish Church was open to what Proselytes would enter themselves, and embrace their Religion and Worship; but there was no public Proclamation made in the World; only God by his miracles in their deliverance from Egypt (which could not but be famous among all the Neighbour Nations) declared them to be a people favoured by Heaven. But the Tradition from Adam and Noah was not publicly revived by God in other parts, and raised from that Grave of forgetfulness, wherein it had lain so long buried. Was there any reason in them for this Indulgence? God might have been as liberal to any other Nation, yea to all the Nations in the World, if it had been his Sovereign pleasure. Any other people were as fit to be entrusted with his Oracles, and be subjects for his Worship as that people; yet all other Nations till the rejection of the Jews, because of their rejection of Christ, were strangers from the Covenant of Promise. These people were part of the common mass of the World: They had no prerogative in nature above Adam's posterity. Were they the extract of an innocent part of his Loins, and all the other Nations drained out of his putrefaction? Had the blood of Abraham, from whom they were more immediately descended any more precious tincture than the rest of mankind? They as well as other Nations were made of one Blood.