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The Church's Marriage to her Sons, and to her God.

ISAIAH Ixii. 4, 5.

THY LAND SHALL BE MARRIED.

FOR AS A YOUNG MAN MARRIETH A VIRGIN, SO SHALL THY SONS MARRY THEE: AND AS THE BRIDEGROOM REJOICETH OVER THE BRIDE, SO SHALL THY GOD REJOICE OVER THEE.

IN the midst of many blessed promises that God makes to his church in this and the preceding and following chapters, of advancement to a state of great peace, comfort, honor and joy, after long continued affliction, we have the sum of all contained in these two verses. In the 4th verse God say's to his church, "Thou shalt no more be termed, Forsak

* Preached at the instalment of the Rev. Mr. Samuel Buel, as pastor of the church and congregation at East Hampton, on Long Island, September 19, 1746.

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en; neither shall thy land any more be termed, Desolate : But thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land, Beulah: For the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married." When it is said, "Thy land shall be married,” we are, by thy land, to understand the body of thy people, thy whole race;" the land, by a metonymy very usual in scripture, being put for the people that inhabit the land.

The 5th verse explains how this that is promised in the last words of verse 4, should be accomplished in two things, viz. in being married to her sons, and married to her God.

1. It is promised that she should be married to her sons, or that her sons should marry her: For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee." Or, as the words might have been more literally translated from the original: "As a young man is married to a virgin, so shall thy sons be married to thee" Some by this understand a promise, that the posterity of the captivated Jews should return again from Babylon to the land of Canaan, and should be, as it were, married or wedded to their own land; i. e. They should be reunited to their own land, and should have great comfort and joy in it, as a young man in a virgin that he marries. But their thus interpreting the words seems to be through inad vertence; not carefully observing the words themselves, how that when it is said, "So shall thy sons marry thee," God does not direct his speech to the land itself, but to the church whose land it was; the pronoun thee being applied to the same mystical person in this former part of the verse, as in the words immediately following in the latter part of the same sentence, "And as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." It is the church, and not the hills and valleys of the land of Canaan, that is God's bride, or the Lamb's wife. It is also manifest, that when Cod says, "So shall thy sons marry thee," he continues to speak to her to whom he had spoken in the three preceding verses; but there it is not the ground or soil of the land of Canaan, but the church, that he speaks to when he says, "The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory

And thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name. Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy And God. Thou shalt no more be termed, Forsaken," &c. to represent the land itself as a bride, and the subject of espousals and marriage, would be a figure of speech very unnatural, and not known in scripture; but for the church of God to be thus represented is very usual throughout the scripture from the beginning to the end of the Bible. And then it is manifest that the return of the Jews to the land of Canaan from the Babylonish captivity, is not the event mainly intended by the prophecy of which these words are a part. The time of that return was not the time when that was fulfilled in the 2d verse of this chapter, " And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: And thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name." That was not the time spoken of in the two preceding chapters, with which this chapter is one continued prophecy. That was not the time spoken of in the last words of the foregoing chapter, when the Lord would cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all nations: Nor was it the time spoken of in the 5th, 6th, and 9th verses of that chapter, when "strangers should stand and feed the flocks of God's people, and the sons of the alien should be ́their ploughmen, and vine dressers; but they should be named the priests of the Lord, and men should call them the ministers of God; when they should eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory boast themselves, and their seed should be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people; and all that should see them should acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed." Nor was that the time spoken of in the chapter preceding that, "when the abundance of the sea should be converted unto the church; when the isles should wait for God, and the ships of Tarshish to bring her sons from far, and their silver and gold with them; when the forces of the Gentiles and their kings should be brought; when the church

should suck the milk of the Gentiles, and suck the breast of kings; and when that nation and kingdom that would not serve her should perish and be utterly wasted: And when the sun should be no more her light by day, neither for bright. ness should the moon give light unto her, but the Lord should be unto her an everlasting light, and her God her glory; and her sun should no more go down, nor her moon withdraw itself, because the Lord should be her everlasting light, and the days of her mourning should be ended." These things manifestly have respect to the Christian church in her most perfect and glorious state on earth in the last ages of the world; when the church should be so far from being confined to the land of Canaan, that she should fill the whole earth, and all lands should be alike holy.

So that the children of Israel's being wedded to the land of Canaan, being manifestly not the meaning of these words in the text, "As a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee," as some suppose; I choose rather, with others, to understand the words of the church's union with her faithful pastors, and the great benefits she should receive from them. God's ministers, though they are set to be the instructors, guides, and fathers of God's people, yet are also the sons of the church. Amos ii. 11. "I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites." Such as these, when faithful, are those precious sons of Zion comparable to fine gold spoken of, Lam. iv. 2, spoken of again, verse 7. "Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk." And as he that marries a young virgin becomes the guide of her youth; so these sons of Zion are represented as taking her by the hand as her guide. Isai. li. 18. "There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth: Neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath brought up.” That by these sons of the church is meant ministers of the gospel, is confirmed by the next verse to the text, "I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem."

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That the sons of the church should be married to her as a young man to a virgin, is a mystery or paradox not unlike many others held forth in the word of God, concerning the relation between Christ and his people, and their relation to him and to one another; such as that Christ is David's Lord and yet his son, and both the root and offspring of David; that Christ is a son born and a child given, and yet the everlasting Father; that the church is Christ's mother, as she is represented, Cant. iii. 11, and viii. 1....and yet that she is his spouse, his sister, and his child; that believers are Christ's mother, and yet his sister and brother; and that ministers are the sons of the church, and yet that they are her fathers, as the apostle speaks of himself, as the father of the members of the church of Corinth, and also the mother of the Galatians, travailing in birth with them, Gal. iv. 19.

2. The second and chief fulfilment here spoken of, of that promise of the church's being married, is in her being married to Christ. "And as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee." Not that we are to understand that the church has many husbands, or that Christ is one husband, and ministers are other husbands that she hath For though ministers are here spoken of as being married to the church, yet it is not as being his fellows or competitors, or as husbands of the church standing in a conjugal relation to his bride in any wise parallel with his : For the church has but one husband; she is not an adulteress, but a virgin, that is devoted wholly to the Lamb, and follows him whithersoever he goes. But ministers espouse the church entirely as Christ's ambassadors, as representing him and standing in his stead, being sent forth by him to be married to her in his name, that by this means she may be married to him. As when a prince marries a foreign lady by proxy, the prince's ambassador marries her, but not in his own name, but in the name of his master, that he may be the instrument of bringing her into a true conjugal relation to him. This is agreeable to what the apostle says, 2 Cor. xi. 2. "I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy; for I have espoused you

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