Page:Plant of renown (2).pdf/3

 and many great and precious promises are made for their encouragement in that evil day; you may read them at your own leasure, for I must not stay upon them just now. But among all the rest of the promises that are made, Christ is the chief; Christ is the To-look of the Church, whatever trouble she be in. In the 7th. chapter of Isaiah, the Church had a trembling heart, God’s Israel was shaken as ever you saw the leaves of the word shaken by the wind, by reason of two Kings combining against them: Well, the Lord tells them, "A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and call his name ." But, might the Church say, what is that to us? What encouragement doth this afford in the present distress? Why, the Messiah is to come of the tribe of Judah and the family of David; and therefore that tribe and family must be preserved, in order to the accomplishment of that premise. Whatever distance of time, suppose hundreds or thousands of years, may interveen before the actual coming of the Messiah; yet the promise of his coming, as it is the ground of your faith for eternal salvation, so it is a security for the present, that the enemy shall not prevail, to the total ruin of Judah and the royal family of David. In all the distresses of the Church, Christ is always presented to her, in the Promise, as the Object of her