A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…

They intended to have built Babel up to heaven. That building that is the subject we are upon, is a building that is intended to be built so high, its top shall reach to heaven indeed, as it will to the highest heavens at the end of the world, when it shall be finished: and therefore God would not suffer the building of his enemies, that they designed to build up to heaven in opposition to it, to prosper. If they had gone on and prospered in building that city and tower, it might have kept the world of wicked men, the enemies of the church, together, as that was their design. They might have remained united in one vast, powerful city; and so they might have been too powerful for the city of God, and quite swallowed it up.

This city of Babel is the same with the city of Babylon; for Babylon in the original is Babel. But Babylon was a city that is always spoken of in scripture as chiefly opposite to the city of God. Babylon, and Jerusalem, or Zion, are opposed to each other often both in the Old Testament and New. This city was a powerful and terrible enemy to the city of God afterwards, notwithstanding this great check put to the building of it in the beginning. But it might have been, and probably would have been vastly more powerful, and able to vex and destroy the church of God, if it had not been thus checked.

Thus it was in kindness to his church in the world, and in prosecution of the great design of redemption, that God put a stop to the building of the city and tower of Babel.