That God himself meant it not so, experience and the event of things hath shown; and that these predictions cannot otherwise have had their accomplishment, than in the succession of the spiritual and everlasting Kingdom of the Messiah (whom God raised up out of his loins to sit on his throne) unto his temporal Kingdom.1 Wherein 'tis therefore ended by perfection, rather than corruption. These Prophesies being then made good, not formally, in the kind which they literally imported; but with an (highly redundant) equivalency in another (far more noble) kind. In which sense God's Covenant with him must be understood,2 which he insists on so much in this Psalm, even unto that degree, as to challenge God upon it, as if in the gloomy dispensation of this juncture (so far did it darken his present apprehension of things) he did actually vacate and make it void:3 Though he sufficiently express his ⟨p. 7⟩confidence, both before and after, that this could never be. But 'tis plain it hath been vacated long enough ago, in the subversion of David's Kingdom; and in that we see his Throne and Family have not been established for ever; have not endured as the days of Heaven; if those words had no other than their obvious and literal meaning. And if any would imagine a salvo to the truth of God, from the wickedness of his posterity, first making a breach, and disobliging him; it is expressly precluded by what we find inserted in reference to this very case: If his children forsake my law, 4and walk not in my judgments, 5&c. Then will I visit their iniquity with the rod, &c.6 Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, 7nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. 8My Covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. All which is solemnly sealed up with this,9 Once have I sworn in my holiness, that I will not lye unto David ⟨p. 8⟩So that they that will make a scruple to accuse the Holy God of falsehood in that which with so much solemnity he hath promised and sworn, must not make any to admit his further intendment in these words. And that he had a further (even a mystical and spiritual) intendment in this Covenant with David, is yet more fully evident from that of the Prophet Isaiah; 10He every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, 11&c. Incline your ear and come to me. 12And I will make an everlasting Covenant with you, 13even the sure mercies of David.
That God himself meant it not so, experience and the event of things hath shown; and that these predictions cannot otherwise have had their accomplishment, than in the succession of the spiritual and everlasting Kingdom of the Messiah (whom God raised up out of his loins to sit on his throne) unto his temporal Kingdom.1 Wherein 'tis therefore ended by perfection, rather than corruption. These Prophesies being then made good, not formally, in the kind which they literally imported; but with an (highly redundant) equivalency in another (far more noble) kind. In which sense God's Covenant with him must be understood,2 which he insists on so much in this Psalm, even unto that degree, as to challenge God upon it, as if in the gloomy dispensation of this juncture (so far did it darken his present apprehension of things) he did actually vacate and make it void:3 Though he sufficiently express his ⟨p. 7⟩confidence, both before and after, that this could never be. But 'tis plain it hath been vacated long enough ago, in the subversion of David's Kingdom; and in that we see his Throne and Family have not been establisht for ever; have not endured as the days of Heaven; if those words had no other than their obvious and literal meaning. And if any would imagine a salvo to the truth of God, from the wickedness of his posterity, first making a breach, and disobliging him; it is expresly precluded by what we find inserted in reference to this very case: If his children forsake my law, 4and walk not in my judgments, 5&c. Then will I visit their iniquity with the rod, &c.6 Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, 7nor suffer my faithful•ess to fail. 8My Covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. All which is solemnly sealed up with this,9
- 1Act. 2. 30
- 2V. 28. 34.
- 3• •9.
- 4V. 30.
- 531.
- 632.
- 733.
- 834.
- 935▪
- 10Isa. 55.
- 11V. 1.
- 122.
- 133.
