8. From Ur, therefore, with his father and the rest of their family, he removed to Haran with a design for Canaan, Gen. xi.31. Where this Haran was situated we before declared. Stephen calls it xafdy, * Charran ;” and so do the Latin writers.
“ Assyrias Latio maculavit sanguine Charras,”’ says Lucan of the overthrow of Crassus’ army near that place; and it may be pronounced either way in the original, from the ambi- guous force of the Hebrew Cheth, but it seems best expressed by Charran. How long he stayed here is uncertain, as was said before. That it was not very long, appears from his marrying, and the bar- renness of Sarah, before he came thither. And yet that they abode there some years is no less evident from chap. xii. 5, “ Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance
454: STATE AND ORDINANCES OF THE CHURCH [EXERC. XIX.
that they had gathered, and the souls” (or “ servants”) “that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan.” It is not the work of a few days or months that is here described. This gathering of substance and getting of souls was a business of some years, of how many it is uncertain. What was the design of Terah, in his attempt to go to the land of Canaan, is not absolutely certain. The especial call of Abraham unto that country could not be the bottom of it; for it is most probable, yea, indeed undeniable, that this he had not until after the death of Terah. It was, therefore, an act of theirs in answer to the provi- dence of God, in a subserviency unto that future call, that he might be in more readiness to yield obedience unto it than he could have been in the land of Ur. Whether Terah did merely seek a new habitation, in a country less peopled than that of his nativity, which doubtless then was the most populous part of the world, as being near the place where mankind first planted after the flood; or whether he might be instructed in the ancient promise, that the posterity of Canaan, the son of Ham, who then possessed the country called after his name, should be servants unto the seed of Shem, from whom Terah was a principal descendant, I know not. In answer to the call of Abraham it could not be; for he was called to leave his father’s house, chap. xii. 1, and not to bring his father his household with him, and that at the seventy-fifth year of his age, when Terah was dead. But whatever was the occasion of it, the providence of God used it in the serving of its designs towards Abraham. And here in Haran, if I may be allowed to conjecture, it is probable that God gave him light into the evil of those super- stitions wherein he was educated, revealed himself as the only true God, and so prepared him for his call unto the tedious journeying and long peregrination that ensued thereon.
9. When his father Terah was dead, and himself seventy-five years old, Gen. xii. 1-4, God called him to himself, and entered into covenant with him in the promise of the land of Canaan, verse 7. And this call of his was the great foundation whereon God after- wards built the whole structure of his worship under the old testa- ment; for herein he both appropriated the promise of the Messiah unto him,—designing his person as the spring from which he should proceed according to the flesh,—and set him and his posterity apart, to be visibly subservient unto the great design of his grace, in the accomplishment of the promise of a deliverer made unto our first parents. This we have elsewhere at large declared, and showed how that after his call every thing was disposed unto a significancy of that which was for to come, and was suited for a continuance unto that season, and no longer.
10. When Abraham was ninety and nine years old,—that is, after
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he had been twenty-four years in the land of Canaan,—the Lord confirmed his covenant with him and his seed by the sign and token of circumcision, Gen. xvii. 7-13: which Paul calls “the seal of the righteousness of faith,” Rom. iv. 11; because God thereby confirmed and assured unto him an interest in the promised Seed, who is “ the LorpD our righteousness,” Isa. xlv. 24, 25, Jer. xxiii. 6; and because he had accepted of the righteousness and salvation which in and by him God had prepared for sinners, in believing the promise, Gen. xv. 6. And herein did God manifest that he took his seed together with him into the covenant, as those who, no less than himself, were - to be made partakers of the righteousness exhibited therein, as also to be used for the channel where the holy seed was to be carried on, until the Word was to take it and to be made flesh, John i. 14; Matt. i. 1; Rom. ix. 5. And by this ordinance of circumcision were his posterity separated from the rest of the world and united among themselves; for however Ishmael and Esau carried the outward sign of circumcision out of the pale and limits of the church, com- municating it unto the nations that sprang of them unto this day, unto whose observance they also adhere (who, being of another ex- tract, have received the law of Mohammed, who was of the offspring of persecuting Ishmael, as the Turks and Persians, with very many of the Indians), yet their observance of it was never under the law of God, nor accepted with him, but is rather accursed by him. But as it was continued in the posterity of Abraham, according unto the promise, it was the fundamental uniting principle of the church amongst them, though dispersed into innumerable particular families. For as there were as tnany churches before as there were families, ecclesiastical and economical or paternal rule being the same, now, the covenant being one, and the token of the covenant being one and the same, unto all the families that sprang of Abraham, which in their several generations were as the sand of the sea-shore, or as the stars for multitude, they were incorporated into one body among themselves, and separated from all the rest of the world. Not that this ordinance alone was sufficient to constitute the whole nation one ecclesiastical body or church, which was done by the following insti- tutions of worship, but that the foundation thereof was first laid herein. Neither without some such general initiation into union could it have been orderly accomplished. And as it was the glory of the people of old, whilst they walked in the steps of the faith of Abraham, so it was the carnal boast of their degenerate posterity. Hence have we so often mention of those who were “uncircumcised,” in the way of reproach and contempt; and when they renewed the administration of it among themselves, upon their first entrance into the land of Canaan, after its omission in the wilderness, it is said that “they rolled away the reproach of Egypt,” Josh, v. 9, because