A supplement to the several discourses upon various divine subjects

2. The glory of Gods Ordinances is obscured among a people, before judgments come upon them. The glory of God went up from the Cherub. I will take away the hedge of my vineyard, and it shall be eaten up, and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down, Isa. 5.5. The Ordinances of God are understood by some interpreters to be the hedge, and wall of a People; when God takes away the Hedge, the breach is made wide for every wild beast to enter, and tread it down. The presence of God in his Ordinances, the presence of God in his providences is the hedge of a people. The Temple is forsaken by God, and then polluted, in judgment, by men, v. 7. God then comes to the man clothed with linen, that had the Writers inkhorn by his side, & said unto him, Go through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof, v. 4. And v. 5. He commands the executioners of his wrath to go after him, & smite without any pity both small and great, beginning at his Sanctuary. [Greek or Hebrew]. Interpreters trouble themselves much what this mark should be, and tell us from Origen, that a believing Jew told him the ancient Samaritan letter called Tau was written like a cross, But that is a fancy, the ancient Samaritan letter being the same with the Phoenician was not writ in that form.¹ Some say it was the law, because the Hebrew word [Greek or Hebrew] signifying the law begins with that letter, to show that such were to be marked that were devoted to the observance of the law. Marked they were, saith Calvin, with a Tau, because that being the last letter in the Alphabet, shows that the people of God are of the lowest account among men, and the off-scouring of the world ת being the first letter of [Greek or Hebrew], vives, noted the preservation of them. On the foreheads ^*] Alluding to the custom of the Eastern countries to mark their Servants on the foreheads with the names of their masters.^* Not on their visible foreheads, but on their invisible consciences; the conscience is the forehead of the Soul; As eminent in the heart as a forehead in the body.