The man of war. A sermon preached to the Artillery Company at Boston, on…

For a Gospel Minister, in the Execution of his Function, to accommodate any portion of Sacred Writ, merely to establish points purely Ethical, Economical, Civil or Military, would be to play the Philosopher, and not act the part of a Divine, who, as such, hath no farther to do with those things than as they are tributary to the Christian Religion.

For a Gospel Minister, in the Execution of his Function, to accommodate any portion of Sacred Writ, meerly to establish points purely Ethical, Oeconomical, Civil or Military, would be to play the Philosopher, and not act the part of a Divine, who, as such, hath no farther to do with those things than as they are tributary to the Christian Religion.

As to the Histories of the Old Testament, besides that they are Exemplary and Written for our Admonition, there are many persons and things recorded in them, which are also Typical, referring to Christ, and to spiritual things; and though it would undermine the Authority of Holy Writ, to allow two distinct senses to one Text; yet there must be a compound one observed in those that are Typical: and things are to be distinctly considered, as they are applicable ⟨p. 5⟩to the Type, and as they refer to the Antitype

That Solomon, to whose History our Text belongs, was a Type of Christ, is too manifest to need any digression for the proof of it: though all things written in his Life cannot with reason be reckoned Typical. That wherein God more peculiarly chose Solomon to represent Christ, was his Kingly Office: for which end he furnished him with Wealth, Honour, and Wisdom surpassing all the Monarchs, which ever had been, or should be. And this Wisdom of his, though it grasped in its comprehension, a knowledge universal of things natural, civil and divine, yet is more eminently celebrated in the well-ordering and settling the Affairs of his Kingdom; in which, his first care was about the House of God, and his Instituted Worship, in which he exactly followed the Divine Prescript, and the Patterns left him by his Father David, which he received from God by Immediate Revelation: Nextly, and subordinately, for the well-ordering and settling of the Outward Affairs of his Kingdom in matters Civil and Military; and this last is the thing about which we are at present concerned.