N13864:341
A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of…
A history of the work of redemption. Containing the outlines of a body of divinity, in a method entirely new. / By the late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New Jersey[.]
Boston: printed by Draper & Folsom, 1782
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. It was one thing that prepared the way for Christ's coming, and setting up the glorious dispensation of the gospel, as it took away many of those things wherein consisted the glory of the Jewish dispensation. In order to introduce the glorious dispensation of the gospel, the external glory of the Jewish church must be diminished, as we observed before. This the Babylonish captivity did many ways; it brought the people very low.
First, it removed the temporal diadem of the house of David away from them, i. e. the supreme and independent government of ⟨p. 108⟩themselves. It took away the crown and diadem from the nation. The time now approaching when Christ, the great and everlasting king of his church, was to reign, it was time for the typical kings to withdraw. As God said by Ezekiel, ch. xxi.26. "He removed the crown and diadem, that is might be no more, till he should come whose right it was." The Jews henceforward were always dependent on the governing power of other nations, until Christ came, for near six hundred years, excepting about 90 years, during which space they maintained a sort of independence, by continual wars under the dominion of the Maccabees and their posterity.
Again, by the captivity, the glory and magnificence of the temple was taken away, and the temple that was built afterwards, was nothing in comparison with it. Thus it was meet, that when the time dr•w nigh that the glorious antetype of the temple should appear, that the typical temple should have in glory withdrawn.