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

I. The first thing that here offers is the captivity of the Jews into Babylon. This was a great dispensation of providence, and such as never was before. The children of Israel in the time of the judges, had often been brought under their enemies; and many ⟨p. 107⟩particular persons were carried captive at other times. But never had there been any such thing as destroying the whole land, the sanctuary, and the city of Jerusalem, and all the cities and villages of the land, and carrying the whole body of the people out of their own land into a country many hundred miles distant, and leaving the land of Canaan empty of God's visible people. The ark had once forsaken the tabernacle of Shiloh, and was carried captive into the land of the Philistines: but never had there been any such thing as the burning the sanctuary, and utterly destroying the ark, and carrying away all the sacred vessels and utensils, and breaking up all their stated worship in the land, and the land's lying waste and empty for so many years together. How lively are those things set forth in the Lamentations of Jeremiah!

The work of redemption was promoted •y this remarkable dispensation in these following ways.

1. It finally cured that nation of their itch after idolatry. The Prophet Isaiah, speaking of the setting up of the kingdom of Christ, chap. ii.18. speaks of the abolishing idolatry as one thing that should be done to this end: "And the idols he shall utterly abolish." When the time was drawing near, that God would abolish Heathen idolatry, through the greater part of the known world, as he did by the preaching of the gospel after Christ came, it pleased him first to abolish Heathenism among his own people; and he did it now by their captivity into Babylon; a presage of that abolishing of idols that God was about to bring to pass by Christ through so great a part of the Heathen world.