Let us cast our eyes about, turn over the records, and examine the experience of past and present generations, and see if all particular observations amount not to this sum, viz., that the great whore hath committed fornication with the kings of the earth, and made drunk thereof nations with the cup of the wine of her fornications: in which drunkenness and whoredom (as whores use to practise) she hath robbed the kings and nations of their power and strength, and, Jezebel like, having procured the kings’ names and seals, she drinks [herself] drunk, Rev. xvii. [6,] with the blood of Naboth, who, because he dares not part with his rightful inheritance in the land of Canaan, the blessed land of promise and salvation in Christ, as a traitor to the civil state and blasphemer against God, she, under the colour of a day of humiliation in prayer and fasting, stones to death.
CHAP. CXVI.
Peace. Dear Truth, how art thou hidden from the eyes of men in these mysteries! how should men weep abundantly with John, that the Lamb may please to open these blessed seals unto them!
Truth. Oh that men more prized their Maker’s fear! then should they be more acquainted with their Maker’s councils, for his secret is with them that fear him, Ps. xxv. 14.
I pass on to a second difference.
Second difference. The mystery of the anointing the kings of Israel and Judah.
The kings of Israel and Judah were all solemnly anointed with oil, Ps. lxxxix. 20, I have found David my servant, with my oil have I anointed him. Whence the kings of Israel and Judah were honoured with that mystical and glorious title of the anointed, or Christ of the Lord, Lam. iv. 20, The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was taken in their pits, &c.
Which anointing and title however, the man of sin, together with the crown and diadem of spiritual Israel, the church of God, he hath given to some of the kings of the earth, that so he may in lieu thereof dispose of their civil crowns the easier: yet shall we find it an incommunicable privilege and prerogative of the saints and people of God.
For as the Lord Jesus himself in the antitype was not anointed with material but spiritual oil, Ps. xlv. 7, with the oil of gladness; and Luke iv. 18, from Isaiah lxi. 1, with the Spirit of God, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings, &c.; so also all his members are anointed with the Holy Spirit of God, 2 Cor. i. 21, and 1 John ii. 20.
The name Christian, or anointed.