Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/128

124  did the same: Pharaoh therefore hardened his heart, and refused to listen to the message, with which they were charged from Jehovah. Similar, in all probability, would be the conduct of many in the present day, were really divine miracles again to be performed: they would either be referred to some incomprehensible operations of nature, or else be rejected as phantasms and crafty deceptions; and such persons, as ascribed them to a divine power, would be held in derision, or pitied for their simplicity. The reason why miracles were performed among the Jews in ancient times, and not among Christians in the present day, is, because the former were so immersed in natural and corporeal affections, that they were incapable of discerning the interior spiritual truths of revelation; neither could these be laid before them without danger of profanation: on which account the Lord spake to that people in parables, "that seeing they might see, and not perceive, and hearing they might hear, and not understand Mark iv. 12. Whereas now, since the introduction and establishment of Christianity in the world, the rational faculties of the human mind are more capable than before of being exercised on subjects of a divine nature, especially in respect to the Lord, his Word, the church, and a state of immortality in another life. The miracles, therefore, which were displayed among the Jewish and Israelitish people in the times alluded to, were performed, not with the design of forming them into a real spiritual church, (for this was not done, nor could it possibly be effected, by any such external means as miracles.) but for the purpose of compelling them to become the mere representative of a church, that all their rites, ceremonies, and acts of public worship might typify, shadow forth, and thus