Chapter 28
How the family of hell, and the near of kin to the devil are set forth in the Holy Scriptures by names peculiar to no others but the non-elect; as liars, beasts, &c., Titus 1:12; I Corinthians 15:32.
The third reason I exhibit against it, {this absurd notion that the children of God were once of the “family of hell,” – prior to Conversion – and “near of kin to Satan,”} is, that when God speaketh of “the rest,” {“the Election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded,” Rom.11:7,} he never calls them sheep, {“but ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep,” Jn.10:26,} children of God, his people, or the like, in all the New Testament; but serpent’s seed, and that is, devil’s seed, and Christ calls them serpents, a generation of vipers, and Peter sets them out by dogs and swine; names that as they are inconsistent with present Grace, so they will not stand with future Grace, or their ever having any interest in the Grace of God at all. {Sebastian Castellio in his Dialogues, 1542, has scoffed at it, belied and bantered it, making a mere piece of laughter at those Awful and Supreme Councils of the Most High.} I begin with Genesis 3:15, “and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” Between thee, the devil, who hath made use of the body of the serpent of the earth, to deceive the woman, and the woman so deceived, who shall be the parent of an elect head and company distinctly; and between thy seed; the wicked brood that are personally cursed as soon as propagated, having lost the Man Christ’s Nature-Image in the loins of their sinning, deceived parents; and her seed, the woman’s seed apart from the serpentine race of wicked men; “to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed, which is Christ,” Gal.3:16, as is elsewhere said of the seed of Abraham. {“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.” I Jn.2:19.} And saith the LORD, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed.” Thou shalt hate the woman, and the woman shall hate thee; and the wicked that shall be thy offspring shall hate the righteous. I will also give a new nature and principle by the woman’s seed, which is Christ, that shall be enmity to the serpent’s seed, and will leave this corrupt, serpentine nature incurable to be enmity to Christ, and all that belong unto him. Thus we see how in this text the non-elect, or those who had not Grace and Glory given to them in Christ Jesus before the world began, II Tim.1:9, are called by the Holy Ghost upon their Fall, the seed of the serpent; and so in the very article and joint of the Fall, they belonged to the family of hell, were limbs of Satan, and near of kin to the devil; and have remained such ever since, and upon all occasions do more and more open and discover themselves to be what they are; nor do Sermons and Exhortations ordinarily make these a jot the better visibly, unless now and then in some points of Humanity. As for the Gospel, there is nothing in them that can receive it, it being foolishness unto them, I Cor.2:14, and they being a rational sort of mankind, many of them of fine wit and great understanding, and so do bark most furiously at the sacred truths of Election, Imputed Righteousness, Regeneration as the sole work of the Spirit, &c., the Holy Ghost never altering the thoughts of their minds, but wholly leaving them in all these matters to their own blind and wretched dictates.
To the same purpose, next you have Matthew 23:33, “ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Serpents, here was the proper brood of the devil, as the old Serpent. {“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.” Rev.12:9.} These belong to his family, and as he is a serpent, so they are serpents too. He was the old serpent, and they were the young serpents, hatching up and bringing on, under the incubation of the devil, from cockatrice-eggs, and never to become any better thing than vipers. “Ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” Whether should the young brood of serpents and vipers go but to the old one? As is his case, so is yours, ye Pharisees, and how can you avoid it? This was the Doctrine which our Lord, the meek and holy Saviour to his own, preached to the devil’s sect, who belonged to outer darkness. For being vipers how can ye not deserve hell? Again, Matthew 12:34, “O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things?” How could the Viper act other ways than the nature of the Viper, and he who had the sting cease to hurt therewith?
Accordingly, says Christ, John 8:44, “ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” You are of that murderer, and therefore you will do all you can to murder God’s New Image in the Head of the Election, just as your father the devil murdered God’s Natural Image in Adam. For, as to those Eternal Settlements in Christ, the Nature-Image was communicated {from him by pattern} to Adam the head of all mankind. “You will {absolutely} do,” for Christ as God saw this murder as absolutely done and finished, Acts 2:23, as if the thing had been openly done and finished to mankind. There was to be no preventing, no stopping them from going on, no repentance to be given them when they had done it, and therefore no saving them from their sins, as in the former case; but they were to sin on, and be damned for it too. {“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” Rev.22:11.} “Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins; whither I go, ye cannot come.” Jn.8:21. These now were the children of hell, and they labored to bring in others and make them worse than themselves. “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.” Mt.23:15. Here now was a child of hell in the kind, such a one as was to continue so finally; and children of hell, or belonging to the family of hell, of the same kind that influenced them. All the children of hell are the proper children of it in relation, but all of them are not children of hell alike in degrees of wickedness, under that relation to it; nor are they alike in relation to the degrees of condemnation, Mk.12:40, appointed unto them who belong unto the family of hell, and are near of kin unto the devil.
On the footing of this, according to the good Pleasure and Justice of God, that the Pharisees in Matthew 23, who labored diligently to make their proselytes {or professors of the strictest sect of the Jews} into that doctrine, which taught that every man must keep the Law to be saved by it; and so directly struck at the Person and Office of Christ, both as the Lord our Righteousness in his Person, Jer.23:6, and as he is made of God unto us Righteousness, I Cor.1:30, in his Office, unto every one that believeth, Rom.1:16, were a generation threatened to receive the greater damnation, verse 14, “therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation;” that is, greater damnation than other sinners, but “greater damnation” for what? Not for cursing and swearing and whoring; for they seemed to be moral men that commendably hated these vices; and lived up high to the light of nature, they prayed, sought God, went to Church, &c., but they should receive greater damnation for not believing into the Doctrine of Revealed Religion, slighting Christ, and setting up a false righteousness to make them accepted with God; making long prayers to cheat poor souls with a belief that without abundance of long praying the Law is not kept, and so as if no flesh could be saved but by that way. “And you devour widows houses,” says he; you come, says Christ, into houses, to women that have no husbands to withstand you, and there you pray and carry on your Pharisaical principles against the Doctrine of the Righteousness of Christ to save men, till the widows in those houses think surely you are in the right, and give you good entertainment upon it; good quarters, and you eat and drink with them almost continually upon free cost, making way for it under pretense of religion; and they having no husbands to control them, or alter these measures, you eat them out of house and home, {you and them you bring,} undo the poor children, and so devour widows houses, by mere pretenses in religion to serve your own fleshly appetites, Rom.16:18; therefore you shall receive the greater damnation. And yet these men in their zeal of prophesying did make a man twofold, Mt.23:15, more a child of hell than themselves. The meaning is this, they searched all corners {for they compassed sea and land} to find out a man of parts, and when by article in religion they had made him a man of zeal too, zeal for their way; why this latter man, this last {most recent convert} Pharisee of the sect, partly by his learning and cunning, and partly by his zeal for the way, after they had fixed him, did twice as much mischief against Christ, in setting up that cursed notion in the world, {that a man must be saved by his own doings,} as the other Pharisees had done, and would carry it on with that blind, bloody activity, as to take everybody out of the way, Christ and all, that taught another doctrine. Thus the proselyte became twofold more a child of hell than the Pharisee.
Now as to these Pharisees who saw Christ, we do not read of one of them that was personally converted. As for Paul, who, after the strictest sect of the religion of the Jews, Acts 26:5, lived a Pharisee, he never saw Christ, till he saw him Glorified appearing to him as he was going to Damascus; and so that instance, Acts 9:3, of a Pharisee converted makes not against this Observation, from whence it’s plain, that Paul belonged not to the family of hell. But those Pharisees personally of whom Christ thus speaketh, were a company of serpents, and vipers, Mt.23:33, that for their very kind’s sake must display their poison and their stings, and be taken off too for their kind’s sake, and because of the necessary propensity {or inclinations} of their unrestrained nature to do mischief, as noxious and hurtful creatures of God’s creation, that are not properly in their “own place,” Acts 1:25, till with Judas and the devils they are cast into hell.
I shall take notice farther that Mr. Hunt seems to contradict himself by owning the doctrine I have now taught, that they are the non-elect and not the elect who belong to the family of hell, as he hath contrarily asserted in the passage I am overthrowing, to wit, that when God comes to adopt us, he finds us belonging to the family of hell, and near akin to the devil. His opposition to himself lies in these words, “he {Christ} boldly told his grand enemies, the Pharisees, that they were a generation of vipers, Mt.3:7, and of their father the devil, Jn.8:44; but I shall not enlarge on this,” says Mr. Hunt, page 121. We see he would but hint his own contradiction, but it is a pity that he had not enlarged on it, and therein he might have found out more instruction to cure his own ignorance. Now he may see I have but taken it up at the end of his own omission, and somewhat enlarged on this point.
To the foregoing texts let me add, Matthew 7:23, “and then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity.” Here Christ never knew them in the Grace-Relation, nor ever knew them of the Glory-kin. He knew them in the nature kind, but they have lost that by iniquity. Now if Christ thus never knew them, then the family of hell are a distinct kind of creatures, and the near of kin to the devil are such as were never known in Foreknowledge of Grace, in Election Grace, Settlement-Grace, Union-Grace, Redemption-Grace, Regeneration-Grace, Communion and Experience-Grace. I never knew you as sheep; I never knew you as the seed of the woman; I never knew you as the children of God; I never knew you as my people; I never knew you under any work of Grace; “depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
The non-elect are also called dogs and swine; says the Holy Ghost by Peter, “but it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, the dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” II Pet.2:22. {“His watchmen are blind; they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark; sleeping, lying down, loving to slumber. Yea, they are greedy dogs which can never have enough, and they are shepherds that cannot understand; they all look to their own way, every one for his gain, from his quarter.” Isa.56:10-11.} And so John in the Revelation by the same Spirit tells us, “without are dogs,” Rev.22:15, without the Holy City, all those that bark at the ways of Christ, have a peculiar way of scoffing and sinning against the Spirit, which elect sinners are kept from arriving to; these dogs are excluded from the glory of the New Jerusalem; not one of them shall ever come into it, as the dogs are without. And saith the Holy Ghost by Paul, “beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision,” Phil.3:2; carry it cautiously with staff in hand; be armed with God’s Word; if you are in your own spirit and carelessness, they’ll fly upon you before you are aware of it. So too the unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, the Romans and the people of Israel that crucified Christ, are called dogs; Psal.22:16, “for dogs have compassed me; the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me; they pierced my hands and my feet;” both the Sanhedrin-power of the Jews, and the mob, have enclosed me, they pierced my hands and my feet; that is, they crucified me; and so in other places. Again, “give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine,” Mt.7:6, now the elect of God before calling were among these, Lk.15:16, but not made any of these.
Objection: Christ calls the woman of Canaan a dog, and yet she was an elect person; therefore this does not hold.
Answer: So ‘tis generally taken in that Matthew 15:26-27, “but he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Nevertheless, the common interpretation is an oversight-gloss, for Christ called not the woman dog. This is plain, because he does not say “dog” in the singular number, as he should, if he had called her, dog; but using the plural style, “dogs,” our Lord called the non-elect Canaanites, her country-folk, so; and proposes it to her under that term of reproach, “dogs,” to lay open how her Faith should take it well, and not to be offended with Christ. It’s certain that nature can’t delight to have its kindred, country, religion, &c., though for Christ’s sake, yea, by Christ himself, blasted; but she being no dog, but a sheep, belonging to the Shepherd, whom he knew by the secret mark, {“and the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite; let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity; Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women; but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary,” Ezek.9:4-6, “and it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal – mark – of God in their foreheads,” Rev.9:4, “and I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Zion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads,” Rev.14:1,} though she did not then know her own relation in Christ, and therefore let it go as generally taken, and worshipped Christ never the worse for it all, being secretly wrought upon by Converting Power.
All this shows what concord that passage has with this wretched scheme of Arminianism, which gives the same denomination to the sheep, to the elect in Christ, to the children of God, &c., as it gives unto the serpents and vipers, to wit, that they both alike did once belong unto the family of hell, and withal shows what inconsistence lies between such a passage as that is of Mr. Hunt, and these other passages of the Holy Scriptures, which have plainly laid open the contrary. And thus you have seen how this third reason stands, I shall but touch upon the other five reasons that follow.
The fourth reason against it is the Birth of Jesus Christ, which can never be of any other but the family of heaven. If he had not been born of Mary, David, Abraham and Seth, an elect seed, secured from the other horrid relation in the posterity of cursed Cain, and Ishmael, &c., then he could not have been exempted from the lavish sentence this author has passed upon all the elect. For the birth of Jesus Christ was plainly according, Mt.1:18, to an elect relation in the relative line of many special saints who were his fleshly ancestors, and also separate too from the corrupt nature of all those relations, which his own Election-seed are not. So that there is an intrinsic relation, as sheep to sheep, and not sheep to goats, and again goats to goats and not goats to sheep, that in the sight of God doth secretly constitute the two families of heaven and hell, or all that be saved, and all that be damned, whatever their outward relation in the sight of men be to one another.
The fifth reason against this transmigration of the kind in Conversion, that is to say, sheep out of goats, saints out of serpents, is, by distinguishing between Nature and Relation. Though all partake of the same Adam nature, only the Elect partake of that Heavenly Relation in Christ, and a failure to distinguish between these two, is a certain path to Arminianism. The elect have a corrupt nature near of kin to the devil, in contrast and in addition to their mystical and secret relation of persons to Jesus Christ, exclusively speaking, that is, to Christ and not to Satan. They had a principle belonging to Hell, but their persons notwithstanding never belonged unto the devil; nor to the number of his accomplices, as the family of hell in outer darkness. The nature is common in both, because of one Common Head to all, Adam; but the relation is divers, as I have shown, because of the Mystical Headship in Christ, Eph.1:4, that secures the relation of his elect seed in that federal manner unto Himself that they can in no sense become the seed of the devil, though they are the corrupt and degenerate offspring of fallen Adam. In short, Election and Settlement secure their Mystical Relation in Christ; also, make provision to restore their natures by an open relation of nature to him.
The sixth reason against it is by distinguishing between children of wrath and children of hell; and yet children of wrath is more than he has written among his Orthodox expressions, of “poor and miserable, undeserving, ill deserving creatures, defiled with sin, and rebels {though he should have said rebellious; for that is not Orthodox to say rebels} against God.” To say, children of wrath is more than to say all the other, when rebels against God is put out; and is less than to say the family of hell, and near akin to the devil. There is a distinction, and the difference is this; that the children of wrath there in Ephesians 2:3, are children of wrath in a natural sense, as children of Adam; when God does anything towards them according to their nature-state in punishment and displeasure through Adam, Jn.3:36, as he does to the elect before conversion to Christ, they feel not the least dram of God’s love, they have not one glimpse of his favor, but black apprehensions of hell and wrath, because God acts towards them as the God of Nature by Adam, Acts 17:26-28, the Nature-head, as Adam is considered in his fallen state; and so under these passive effects of God’s Displeasure with Adam-personal, and all men as considered in Adam, and so with Adam mystically, they are children of wrath; yet he does not deal with them from hell and from the devil, whilst he does all this towards them from nature-Adam; and so they become children of wrath in their natural state from Adam, but never children of hell in that natural state, because God deals not with or towards them as the offspring of the devil, in conjunction with the offspring of Adam, as he deals with such whom he has not known in Christ, when he finds sin upon them. God is the God of Nature by Adam, and the God of Grace by Christ towards men.
The seventh reason against it, is, that the author’s notion builds Election upon foreseen Faith, as the Arminians do; for if they belong to the family of hell today, and are brought to belong to the family of heaven tomorrow, as the Arminians hold, then it is by reason of their Faith, Repentance and Good Works, that their relation from one family to another is altered by excision; neither doth this suit with changing their natures by Grace; as {according to the Arminian system} foreseen Faith and Repentance and Obedience of the creature moves Grace, and so Grace is brought in upon works. But it is not our ragged works in any sense which activate a principle of Grace, but God’s Grace is in effectual Operation, as the true Method and Mystery of the Gospel is, for the true and only Gospel declares Grace alone for salvation; “ye are saved by Grace,” Eph.2:8, and the Government or Order of the Gospel is works in Edification, and Grace bestowed unto good works, for Edification, unto the ultimate glory and praise of God. {“Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.” Phil.1:11.} While we are building up, we must be workers for God, though in laying us upon the Foundation God only is a Worker by Himself. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life,” Tit.3:5-7; and upon this Foundation laid in Christ follows, verse 8, “that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works;” and against this notion of the Arminians building Election upon foreseen Faith, that text in Jeremiah 31:3, which I have elsewhere opened, is a pregnant place, “the LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”
The eighth and last reason against it, is, this is only consistent with such an Election as does not secure them from Apostasy; for he that is elected today upon his good behavior, must by the same rule be rejected tomorrow upon his ill behavior; and this comes up directly to what the Arminians hold in Election, framing only such a notion of it as agrees with final Apostasy, and makes no provision for the Perseverance of the Saints, II Tim.2:19 with Jn.10:28, who yet are kept by the mighty power of God through Faith; not for foreseen Faith, but through Faith bestowed by God’s Mighty Power unto Salvation. “Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” I Pet.1:5. And so much for this Examination and Refutation of the first passage, or error against Election.
Mr. Hunt’s second error against Election is this. “We are not so far off before, but now by Grace we are as nigh.” {Page 163} Thus he makes our distance to be once as great, as now our relation is near. This is near of kin to the other Arminianism; so I’ll but touch it, having already spoken to that so fully. It is his error against Election to make the natural distance of the elect as great on one hand, as their Evangelical Translation {“who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son,” Col.1:13} is great on the other.
1. Their distance was but a natural and moral distance, whereas their translation is a Spiritual and Heavenly nearness; neither is there any comparison between these.
2. Their distance was in quality, but their Translation is in substance by God dwelling in them. The Spirit himself possesses them in their nearness, whereas in their distance they lay under no more than a privatization of Adam’s rectitude, and imputation of Adam’s guilt and nature, together with a contraction of sinful and deprived habits, all which are evils vastly short of the benefit and single good of the Spirit’s indwelling.
3. ‘Tis plain that by Grace we are nearer in God’s Favor than ever by Sin we were removed out of God’s sight. For the LORD hath always seen us where He Himself had put us, into safe hands in Christ; and a distance from him in any respect consistent with that Mystical Nearness, is a distance not to be compared with the nearness we are now brought to through Christ.
His third error against Election is this, “though there is that excellency to be found in Christ which is not to be found in any creature in the world, yet God gives him to such as were rebels and traitors.” {Page 156}
1. ‘Tis evident that by “rebels and traitors” he means such as have Election-Grace all canceled by the fall of Adam, and that they be in the same Condition and Relation with the non-elect, as the Arminians hold. To justify and make this good, that if he means anything, he must mean so, as I will appeal to his own use of the phrase elsewhere. For speaking of the damned in hell {he tells us} they suffer in soul with a vengeance, “but they do not suffer in a good cause, but as traitors and rebels against the King of Heaven.” {Page 105} Now if God gives Christ to such as were traitors and rebels against the King of Heaven, which is the most peculiar stigmatizing brand of the non-elect in filling up the measure of their sins, then he gives Christ to such as had Election-Grace canceled by the Fall of Adam, and their becoming traitors and rebels thereupon; so that as fair as Mr. Hunt’s passage in the matter looks {if not discerningly opened} ‘tis downright Arminianism. {As for the word traitor and traitors, I know none but Judas Iscariot that betrayed Christ, and the men who were appointed to fill up the last perilous times, and to distinguish from the Elect, that are so called.}
2. He goes much farther in the denomination of the elect upon their sinning than the Holy Scriptures go. These distinguish between rebels and rebellious, though Mr. Hunt never considered it, and perhaps {being now engaged} is under a temptation to defend his own error. A chosen vessel may be left so far in Adam-nature as to be a persecutor, though we have no ground to believe that the body of persecutors are severally chosen vessels; but a chosen vessel though a persecutor, as likewise any other sinner of the Election of Grace, never passeth in Scripture under the denomination of a rebel. They may be and are rebellious, but not rebels in the abstract. That’s man’s invented name, not God’s revealed name for them. There man runs on by his own unthinking wisdom. In Isaiah 30:1, “woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin; that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt!” This woe was to be sadly executed in temporal strokes, and that very arm of flesh they depended on should be their destruction. Again, the rebellions of this people were to be registered, verses 8,9, “now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever; that this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the LORD.” Here you see that the Lord resents their provocations to that degree, as you would think if anything could provoke him to call them rebels, it must be this; yet it does not, for he twice repeats it, and yet proceeds no farther in the aggravation, than to express it by the concrete, rebellious; and though he aggravates their sin grievously in the following verses, yet he doth not load it with the abstract, “rebels and traitors,” but after all the temporal judgments that should overtake them and cut them off for their disobedience in this life, he looks still upon them as a people at bottom, by Election-Grace, that were discriminated secretly {besides their visible owning} from the non-elect. This plainly appears by verse 18, “and therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, {unto you rebellious children,} and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you; for the LORD is a God of judgment; blessed are all they that wait for him.” When Grace is for a people in God’s Settlements, let the outward dispensation be what it will in sin and judgments for sin, yet Grace will be unto a people finally, even to that same people at last. So in many other places he speaks of his people, a rebellious people, Isa.65:2, a rebellious nation, Ezek.2:3, a rebellious house, verse 5, a rebellious generation, Psal.78:8; but yet so long as there was a mixture of them that should be saved, he doth not call them rebels in the abstract, having his eye upon the elect discriminately.
3. When the Lord comes to sever the non-elect for their wickedness from the elect in their transgressions; he calls that non-elect people, whom he has appointed out to utter destruction for their wickedness, “rebels,” Ezek.20:38, “and I will purge out from among you the rebels, and them that transgress against me; I will bring them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of Israel; and ye shall know that I am the LORD.” “I will purge out from among you the rebels,” and in that famous instance of the company of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, separated to punishment from the rest of the congregation, Num.17:10, “and the LORD said unto Moses, bring Aaron's rod again before the testimony, to be kept for a token against the rebels; and thou shalt quite take away their murmurings from me, that they die not.” Moreover, it was in the heat of Moses’ spirit {for which he is reproved by the Holy Ghost, in speaking unadvisedly, Psal.106:33, with his lips} that among other expressions which came from his mouth, he used this language that Mr. Hunt hath done, promiscuous to the elect, as well as the rest, “hear now ye rebels,” Num.20:10, but I pass to the next error.