the Lord shall return, and come to Sion with songs of | afflicted, tossed with tempests, and not comforted; praise; everlasting joy shall fill their hearts, and crown their heads; and sorrow and sighing, those clouds which in this world are still returning after the rain, shall be finally dismissed, and flee away for ever. The redeemed of the Lord, by virtue of their union with the Redeemer, will then sit down with him upon his throne, as he overcame, and is set down with his Father upon his throne, and reign with him for ever. This is the year of the redeemed; for it is the year which their hearts are upon, which, according to the promise, they look for, and have an eye to, in all their present services, sufferings, and struggles. It will be the crown and satisfaction of their faith and hope, and the perpetual perfection of all their joys and honours. Think, my brethren, think seriously, what that year of the redeemed will be to you. How will the archangel's trumpet sound in your ears? will it be a joyful or a dreadful sound? To them that obey the gospel, and live up to it, it will proclaim liberty and honour; but against them who are unbelieving and disobedient, it will denounce war and ruin. That great day will be coronation day to the former, but execution day to the latter. We none of us know but this year of which we now see the beginning may be the year of our death; if it should be so, will it be the year of our redemption? And can we, as such, bid it welcome, and heartily say farewell to this world? Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, and then you may look for death and judgment with joy and rejoicing. Spend your time well, and then no doubt but you shall spend your eternity well; and the year of the redeemed will be the year of your eternal redemption. (2.) Let me more largely apply it to the militant church; and the particular parts and branches of Christ's kingdom in the world, and their states and interests, those especially with which we are best acquainted, and in which we are most nearly concerned. I was yesterday endeavouring, as well as I could, to excite your holy joys and thankful praises for the great things God has of late done for us, and our allies, whom he crowned, the last year, with his goodness: I would to-day say something for the encouragement of your faith and hope in God, concerning the events of the year ensuing, and of your earnest prayers to God that it may prove one of the years of the redeemed. and Sion constrained to dwell with the daughters of Babylon." Israel had many enemies, was often in the hands, often under the feet, of their enemies; and the redemption of Israel was often prayed for, and often promised; much more reason has the gospel church (that never had so many promises made to it, relating to the life that now is, as the Old-Testament church had) to expect trouble in this world; to be fought against, and to suffer persecution; in conformity to the example of its head. The book of the Revelations gives us intimation enough of troublesome times that were to pass over the Church; and though it should be allowed doubtful who the enemy is that is there described, yet it is past dispute, that there should arise an enemy, a powerful and dangerous one, who should make war with those that keep the commandments of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ: so that we are not to think it strange, no, not concerning the fiery trial, if the best of God's saints and servants be called out to it, as though some strange thing happened. Behold, Christ has told us before, that when it comes it may be no surprise or offence to us. But there will come a year of redemption for those who suffer in the cause of Christ; God will not, and men shall not, contend for ever; nor shall the rod of the wicked rest always upon the lot of the righteous, though it may rest long there. It is the state of some of the reformed churches abroad, especially those of France, that I have upon my heart, and had in my eye in the choice of this text. The year of their deliverance, whenever it comes, I must call the year of the redeemed. The excellent Archbishop Tillotson, in a sermon, on Rev. xiv. 13. plainly intimates his suspicion, that the French king is that second beast described (Rev. xiii. 11.) with two horns, France and Navarre, speaking like a dragon, which (says he) may point at a particular sort of armed soldiers called dragons, or dragoons: and the number six hundred sixty-six in the name LUDOVICUs: and that the persecution of the French protestants, in that last and great persecution, is there foretold. And in another sermon before King William and Queen Mary in the year 1692, makes him the present great supporter of the mystical Babylon. And if so, a deliverance from under his tyranny may well be prayed and hoped for, in the year of the redeemed. [Since the preaching of this, I have with much pleasure received encouragement to my hopes, and It is no new thing for the church of Christ upon been confirmed in my choice of this subject, for an earth to be in distress and bondage, and to stand in appendix to the thanksgiving, by that excellent need of redemption, notwithstanding the great re-discourse of the worthy Bishop of Sarum, before demption from sin and hell, which the Lord Jesus the Queen and both Houses of parliament, on the has wrought out. It is always militant, it is often Thanksgiving-day, in which he lays so much stress t Isa. xxxv. 10. π Zech. ii. 7. Rev. xii. 17. upon the French king's barbarous usage of his pro- | persecutions for righteousness' sake, are yet more testant subjects, in his description of him as an provoking: all innocent blood is precious to God, oppressor, whom it will be the glory of a good prince and inquisition will be made for it; but the blood to help to break in pieces: and he tells that august of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, assembly, “That till the exiles are recalled, till the is in a special manner precious to him, and not a prisoners are set at liberty, till the edicts that were drop of it shall be shed but it shall be reckoned for. their inheritance are revived, and compensation is made for the precious blood that has been shed among them; till the oppressor is so bounded, that his own people are secured from oppression, and his neighbours from invasion; till this is done, it is reasonable to hope, that man will say as God has said, There is no peace to the wicked." God keep that word always in the imagination of the thoughts of their hearts, to whom it was spoken, and establish their way before him.] Four things it will be proper for us to inquire into, concerning the year of the redeemed which we are hoping, and praying, and waiting for. I. What the year of the redeemed will be, and what we expect to be included in it. II. What ground we have to believe that it will come, some time. III. What encouragement we have to hope that it will come quickly. IV. What is our duty in reference hereto. I. What we may expect the year of the redeemed will be, which according to his promise we may look for. You shall see it in three things: 1. The year of recompence for the controversy of Sion, will be the year of the redeemed. Such a year we read of, (Isa. xxxiv. 8.) and it is parallel to this here, for it explains the day of vengeance, which is here said to be in the heart of the victorious Redeemer. Therefore the sword that is bathed in heaven, shall come down upon Idumea, the people of God's curse, because it is the year of recompence for the controversy of Sion. The great day of recompence for Sion's controversy will be at the end of time, in the valley of decision," when the long depending controversy, after many struggles, will at length be determined; when everlasting tribulation shall be recompensed by the Lord Jesus, to them that troubled his church, and to them who were troubled, everlasting rest. The Lord hasten that glorious day, and make us ready for it! But we may expect that it will be done, in part, in this world. When God shall have performed his whole work upon mount Sion, and upon Jerusalem, his humbling, reforming work upon them, he will then perform his saving work for them, and will punish the fruit of the stout heart of the king of Assyria, and the glory of his high looks: the zeal of the Lord of hosts shall do this. All the wrongs done to Sion will be returned to those who did them, and the cup of trembling will be taken out of the hand of the oppressed, and put into the hand of the oppressor. The arm of the Lord will awake as in the days of old, and will put on strength; that mighty arm that humbled Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Herod, Julian, and other the proud enemies of his church, will be made bare, in our day, against the successors of these sons of pride and violence. The papal kingdom in general, that has for many ages been so barbarously oppressive to the faithful worshippers of God, and the French tyranny in particular, that has been remark think, God has a controversy on Sion's behalf, and the day will come that he will plead it. His controversy is, God espouses Sion's cause, does and will pleadably so in our days, are the enemies, with whom, I it with jealousy: his church is dear to him as the apple of his eye, and, therefore, he has a controversy with those who are injurious to his people; and sooner or later he will reckon with them, and will avenge his own elect, who cry day and night to him, though he bear long. He has a righteous quarrel with them, and he will avenge that quarrel. | Barbarous and unrighteous wars fill the measure of a nation's sins; and are that fourth transgression, for which, when it is added to other three, God will not turn away the punishment of a people, as is intimated, (Amos i. 6, 9, 11, 13.) where for three transgressions, and then this as the fourth, God will reckon with Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, because they had delivered up the whole captivity, had pursued with the sword, and cast off all pity, particularly had ript up the women with child: would not God visit for these things, should not his soul be avenged on such a nation as this? But barbarous (1.) For the sons of Sion, whom they [the persecutors] have abused; the precious sons of Sion, comparable to fine gold; who have not only been despised and thrown by as vessels in which there is no pleasure, but trodden down and broken to pieces as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter. How many excellent ministers and Christians have been sacrificed to the pride and malice of the church of Rome, and with a rage reaching up to heaven, numbered to the sword as sheep for the slaughter! and the survivors either miserably enslaved in the galleys, and there dying daily, or buried alive in dungeons, or forced to beg their bread in strange countries: and shall not this be recompensed? (2.) For the songs of Sion, which they have pro faned. This head is suggested by that instance of | be a most glorious deliverance. We long to hear of the Babylonians' insolence, and contempt of the the breaking off the yoke from off their necks, that Jews and their religion, when they upbraided them they may no longer be compelled to give that honour in their captivity with the songs of Sion: and, for to the creature that is the Creator's due, against this, it follows, Daughter of Babylon, thou art to be the conviction of their consciences; but may be destroyed. The contempt cast upon the pure wor- brought up out of that Egypt, to sacrifice unto the ship of God as heretical, and the jest made of sacred Lord with freedom, though it were in a wilderness. For, Is Israel a servant? Is conscience a home-born things, is what God will reckon for. slave, that it is thus spoiled, thus imposed upon ? No; it is God's Son, it is his first-born, and he will maintain its privileges. Lord, bring their souls out of prison, that they may praise thy name. (3.) For the powers of Sion's king, which they have usurped. All the anointed offices of our Lord Jesus are boldly invaded by the papacy. His prophetical office, by setting up an infallibility in pope or councils; his kingly office, by setting up the supremacy of the bishop of Rome over all churches, and giving him the power of Christ's vicar, or his rival rather, upon earth; and his priestly office, by making the mass a propitiatory sacrifice for sin, and saints and angels mediators between God and man. And shall not the crown of the exalted Redeemer be supported against these usurpations? (4.) For the pleasant things of Sion's palaces which they have laid waste. God will reckon for the many churches they have demolished, the solemn assemblies they have scattered, the administration of ordinances they have restrained, and the fountains of living water they have stopped up. God keeps an account of all the mischief of this kind done at any time by the papal power and its adherents, and will bring it all into the reckoning when the year of recompences comes. 2. The year of release for God's captives, will be the year of the redeemed; and this is the year we are waiting for. While we enjoy our liberties and opportunities, in peace and without check, we ought to remember them who are in bonds, and to pray for the turning again of their captivity as the streams in the south. (1.) Oppressed consciences, we long to hear of the release of. Of the many that through the force of persecution have been brought to put forth their hands unto iniquity, we hope there are some who have not put forth their hearts to it; but if the force were taken off, would return to the true religion, which they have in word renounced. The triumphs of tyranny over those pretended converts cannot be thought of by any good Christian, without the utmost indignation; for the worst of tyranny is theirs, who take a pride in saying to men's souls, Bow down, that we may go over ; insulting over conscience, and pretending to command that: and though the utmost point they can gain by all their violence, is that, as it follows there, men lay their body as the ground, and as the streets to them that go over, by external compliances, while the soul remains unbended; yet this being a most grievous affliction, (as it is there spoken of,) the freeing of the oppressed from this force will (2.) Oppressed confessors, we also long to hear of the release of. Humanity obliges us much, and Christianity much more, to pity the distressed state of those who are in bonds and banishment, in dungeons and in galleys, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. When will the time come that the house of the prisoners shall be opened, and every man's chains fall from his hands, that a spirit of life from God shall enter into the dry bones, that they may live? The account we had some years ago of the brave and daring struggles of the Sevennois, was such a noise and a shaking, as we thought portended the return of bone to his bone, and a glorious resurrection of God's witnesses; but that affair, for aught we hear, is now asleep: God himself revive that work in the midst of the years, and so hasten the year of the redeemed! 3. The year of the revival of primitive Christianity in the power of it, will be the year of the redeemed. This we wish, we hope, we long to see, both at home and abroad; not the establishment and advancement of any party, but the extinguishing and swallowing up of all parties in the prevalence of pure religion, and undefiled, and the dominion of serious godliness in the hearts and lives of all who are called by the Christian name. When the bounds of the church will be enlarged by the conversion of Pagan and Mahometan nations to the faith of Christ, and the spreading of the gospel in foreign parts; when the enlargement of trade and commerce shall be made serviceable to the interests of Christianity, as it is to our secular interests, and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ, and the Redeemer's throne shall be set up where Satan's seat is, then will the year of the redeemed come. When what is amiss in the churches of Christ shall be amended, mistakes rectified, corruptions purged out, and every plant that is not of our heavenly Father's planting, shall be rooted up, and the plants that are, shall be fruitful and flourishing; when the Lord of the temple shall sit as a refiner, and shall purify the sons of Levi, and all the seed of Israel, then shall the year of the redeemed come.1 | When the word of the Lord shall have a free | the "boundless ambition of France," as the proclacourse; when vice and profaneness shall be sup- mations often call it. The universal Monarch will pressed, and all iniquity shall stop her mouth; not suffer himself to be rivalled and insulted by a when virtue and piety shall be not only generally bold pretender to an universal monarchy; nor will praised, but generally practised; when in every he, who alone is absolute, have the flowers of his place the spiritual incense shall be offered, and a crown plucked by a pretender to absolute sovepure offering with pure hands, and the principles reignty. The humbling and abasing of such proud of our holy religion shall be copied out into men's men, treading them down, and hiding them in the hearts and lives, then shall the year of the redeemed dust together, by which the great Jehovah proves himself to be God; and in which he glories, above any thing, in his discourse with Job, out of the whirlwind: Do thou do so (says he) and then will I also confess unto thee.' And will he not do it in our day? come. When the divisions of the church shall be healed, and the unity of the Spirit kept entirely in the bond of peace, so that Ephraim shall no longer envy Judah, nor Judah vex Ephraim; when all shall agree to love one another, though they cannot agree in every thing to think with one another; when the Lord shall be one, and his name one, and all who profess his name one in Christ, the great centre of unity, then shall the year of the redeemed come. In a word, when the Spirit shall be poured out upon us from on high, so that knowledge shall triumph over ignorance, truth over error, devotion over profaneness, virtue over all immoralities, justice and truth over treachery and all unrighteousness, and Christian love and charity over schism, bigotry, and all uncharitableness; then shall the year of the redeemed come. But alas! Who shall live when God doeth this? The Lord hasten it in its season. II. What ground we have to believe that the year of the redeemed, even the year of recompences for the controversy of Sion, will come some time, whether we live to see it or no. That which I build upon is, Look abroad, (my brethren,) look abroad with pleasure upon this earth, and see it, as wild as it is, and as bad as it is, under the government of a righteous God, whose eyes run to and fro through it, and who does according to his will, not only in the armies of heaven, who are not too high to be above his control; but among the inhabitants of the earth, who are not too mean to be below his cognizance. They are mistaken who think God has forsaken the earth, and that he cannot judge through the dark cloud;' who say in their hearts, God hath forgotten, and, Thou wilt not require it. The day is coming when it shall be so evident, that every man will own it: verily there is a reward for the righteous; verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth." Suppose we could not read the doom of the papacy, and the French tyranny, out of the depths of the Apocalypse, we may read it out of the Proverbs of Solomon, the plainest book in all the Bible; for there we are told, men's pride will bring them low; wealth gotten by vanity will be diminished; he that seeketh mischief it shall come upon him; and whoso doth violence to innocent blood, shall flee to the pit, and no man shall stay him. And no word of God shall fall to the ground. The tender concern God has for his church and people. His redeemed are very dear to him, and he is jealous for them, as his portion, and peculiar treasure; he takes pleasure in their prosperity, and in all their afflictions he is afflicted; and he takes what is done against them as done against himself: and shall not he avenge his own elect, because they are his own? He who purchased the soul of his turtle dove with the blood of his Son, will not deliver it into the hand of the multitude of its adversaries.▾ 1. The justice and righteousness of that God who governs the world, and whose kingdom ruleth over all. If men are unrighteous, they shall find to their cost that God is not. If men make nothing of their | word, God makes something of his; and the unbelief of men shall not make it void and of none effect. Though clouds and darkness are round about him, so that we know not the way that he takes, verily he is a God who hideth himself; yet judgment and justice are the habitation of his throne; and so will it appear when the mystery of God shall be finished, and the heavens shall declare his righteousness, and neither earth nor hell shall have any thing to object against it. Sooner or later the Lord will be known by the judgment which he executes. Look up, (my brethren,) look up with an eye of faith to heaven above, and see the Lord God Omnipotent upon a throne, high and lifted up; the throne of glory, the throne of government, which he has pre-ple. If they be abandoned and cast out of his care pared in the heavens, and established there, though the heathen rage, and the floods lift up their waves :9 and hence let us take encouragement to hope, that in due time we shall see an effectual check given to Especially, considering how much his own honour is interested in the concerns of his church and peo what will the Egyptians say; it will for ever dis- r Job xl. 12—14. . Ezek. ix. 9. u Ps. lviii. 11. v Ps. lxxiv. 19. no doubt, he will work for his own name, his own great name, that that may not be polluted among the heathen. The many exceeding great and precious promises which he has made in his word concerning his church, and on which he has caused us to hope: on these our faith must build, and we shall find them a firm and never failing foundation. God has spoken in his holiness," and we will rejoice in what he has promised, it is all our own. He has promised, that he will judge for his people, and repent himself concerning his servants, when he sees that their strength is gone. That for the oppression of the poor, and the sighing of the needy, he will arise and set them in safety. That the Redeemer shall come to Sion, and turn away ungodliness from Jacob. That there shall be no more any pricking brier or grieving thorn, nor any to hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain.2 enemy, and then another, mightily oppressed them, for so many years; but in due time God raised them up a deliverer, and sent from heaven to save them. The captivity in Babylon came to an end at the set time. The treading under foot of the sanctuary, by Antiochus, was limited to a certain number of days, and then the sanctuary was cleaned. Thus the Jewish nation, as long as it continued the church of God, though often distressed, was still delivered, till by rejecting Christ and his Gospel, they threw themselves out of the church; and now they wait in vain for redemption from their present dispersion, and cannot expect it till they shall look unto him whom they pierced. The Christian church has been often afflicted from its youth up, groaned long under the yoke of the pagan powers; but in Constantine's time the year of the redeemed came, when the great red dragon It was shown in vision to the prophet Daniel what was cast out, and his angels who adored him were great havoc would be made, by persecuting powers cast out with him; when idolatry was abolished, of the church in the latter times of it; but at the and persecution came to an end, and that voice was same time, the deliverance of the church and the heard in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, destruction of its enemies is foretold. Antiochus the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ.h shall be mighty, and shall wonderfully destroy the peo- -Many have been the troubles of the followers of ple of the Holy One: and through his policy he shall Christ; but the Lord has delivered them out of them cause craft to prosper in his hand, and he shall magnify all. Now, God is the same yesterday, to-day, and himself in his heart; and by peace (more than by war) | for ever; he is God, and changes not; his arm is not he shall destroy many, (who can avoid thinking of shortened, his ear is not heavy, his love is not spent, the French king at the reading of this?) but he shall nor are his counsels changed: and, therefore, we be broken without hand; or, as it is in a parallel are sure, the year of the redeemed will come in due place, he shall come to his end, and none shall help time, and though it tarry we will wait for it; for the him. And of another great enemy, arising out of vision is for an appointed time, and at the end it shall the fourth kingdom, which seems to be the papacy, speak, and shall not lie. it is said, that he shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws by an unlimited power; and they shall be given into his hand, by the divine permission, for wise and holy ends, until a time, times, and the dividing of time. But what will come of him at last? Shall he reign thus for ever, because he clotheth himself with cedar ?e No, the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away kis dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. The God of truth has said it, and shall stand firm, He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity; and he that killeth with the sword, shall be killed by the sword, when his day shall come to fall: and in the mean time, here is the patience and the faith of the saints.' III. What encouragement we have to hope that the year of the redeemed will come shortly; that the rescue of the oppressed and the ruin of the oppressor is not far off; that the progress and advancement of the protestant religion in Europe, with the reviving and flourishing of serious piety in all the churches of Christ, are blessings at the door. As to this, let me premise, that we ought to be very sober and modest in our conjectures concerning the time of the accomplishment of Scripture prophecies. Buxtorf, I remember, somewhere quotes a saying of the Jewish rabbins, Rumpatur spiritus eorum qui supputant tempora-Calculating the times breaks the spirit. They have so long and so often looked for the coming of the Messiah, and been disappointed, that they curse him who fixes the time of his coming. We despair not of the things themselves that God has promised; but we presume not to limit the Holy One of Israel, or to set him his time; we wrong the promise by doing so, and are tempted to think, when Providence breaks our measures, it is the breaking of God's word,--and nothing tends more to the breaking of our spirits: whereas |