Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: he would lay hold of it. Oh! that it were once received by him, that it were in his hand; and then let him do with it what seems him good. Sayest thou so ? Then it is done. Give it really and freely, and he will take, and make it better at its worst, than all the gold, and frankincense, and myrrh of all those rich countries where they abound, and will purify, rectify, and make it quite another thing than it is. And it shall never repent thee to have made a gift of it to him. He shall frame it to his own likeness, and in return will give thee himself, and be thine for ever. CHAPTER III. Although the enemies of Jesus Christ, and for a time, even his friends and followers, mistook the nature of his kingdom, yet he is a king. This being questioned, he himself avowed it before the Roman judge; and even in his low estate on earth, yet were there intermixed signs and characters of royalty. To instance here no more, the former chapter hath the history of one of them, and this of another. In that was the homage done to him a little after his entering into the world by birth In this, we have his harbinger preparing his way a little before his coming forth into the world, to manifest himself in his words and works. This chapter, you see, contains the history of John Baptist ?1st. the nature of his office; 2dly. the exercise of his office; and that both generally to the multitude of the Jews that resorted to his baptism, and particularly, to some of more eminent note amongst them, the Pharisees and Sadducees, and singularly on the person of Jesus Christ. Ver. 1. In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea.] This relates not to the history that goes before, but to that which follows to be recorded, as the usual style of the Hebrew bears. It is clear t…
