[Bodies that are incorporated, whether in cities, boroughs, or societies of any kind, have their peculiar privileges, to which others who belong not to them are not entitled. Thus it is with the saints, who are formed into one body in Christ, and have the most distinguished privileges confirmed to them by a charter from the court of heaven. That charter is the Gospel, in which all their immunities and all their claims are fully described. What externally belonged to the Jewish nation at large, is internally and spiritually made over to them : " to them belong the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises b :" yes, all that God has revealed in his Gospel, all that he has promised to his believing people, all that he has engaged to them in his everlasting covenant, all that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob enjoyed on earth, and all that they now possess in heaven, all without exception is theirs ; "All things are theirs when they are Christ's." They are " citizens of no mean city," seeing that " they are come to Mount Zion, the city of the living Godc:" and whatever per- tains to that is the lot of their inheritance.]
They are also " of the household of God" — [As in the days of old there was an outer court for the Gentiles, and an inner court into which the native servants and children of Jehovah were privileged to enter, so now believers have access to God as his more immediate children and ser- vants. They go in and out before him with a liberty unknown to the natural man ; they hear his voice ; they enjoy his pro- tection ; they subsist from day to day by the provision which he assigns them : the family to which they belong comprehends " an innumerable company of angels, and the general assembly and Church of the first-born which are written in heaven," together with myriads who are yet on their way to Zion : but all regard him as their common Head, their Lord, their Master, their Father and their Friend.]
Exalted as this privilege is, it is far surpassed by that which is contained under that other metaphor,
II. The temple wherein he dwells —
The whole body of true believers is the temple of
the living God —
[Their foundation properly is Christ. But, in the text, the Church is said to be " built on the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets," because they with one voice testified of Christ ; and on their testimony the Church is built. This
* Rom. ix. 4. c Ileb. xii. 22.