may trace our present dangers to the insatiable am- bition of a tyrant: but in our case, as well as theirs, it is certain, that " at the commandment of the Lord all this is come upon us :" and the same reason also may be assigned, " Our land is denied with blood," with the blood of thousands of our fellow-creatures in Africa, and with the blood of murderous duellists in our own land; with "blood (I say) which, the Lord will not pardon." Moreover, these iniquities must be considered as sanctioned by the legislature, because they who alone have the power, adopt no measures to cleanse the land from these horrible defilements. God therefore has taken the matter into his own hands, and has stirred up once more our inveterate enemies to avenge his quarrel.0 The time is come when he is about to " make inquisition for blood," and when he will require at our hands both the inno- cent blood that we have shed, and the guilty blood which we have forborne to shed. O that we might take warning ere it be too late ; and put away the evils which are likely to involve us in utter ruin!
Thus it appears that the ordinance before us is by no means uninstructive, or irrelevant to the present occasion, when God's representatives in judgment are about to investigate causes, and to execute the laws. And we hope that in delivering our sentiments on such momentous concerns we shall not be thought to have exceeded our province, or to have transgressed the rules which modesty, combined with faithfulness, would prescribe.
But we are to consider the appointment of these cities of refuge in another view also ; namely, II. As a typical institution —
The whole of the Mosaic economy was " a shadow of good things to come ;" and the typical import of it is illustrated at large in the Epistle to the He- brews. Of course it cannot be expected that every particular part of it should be opened to us with the same precision. What was most essential to the understanding of Christianity, was explained to us
c This was an Assize Sermon, preached at Cambridge, July, 1803.
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