159 LECTURE VI. REVELATION iii. 3. REMEMBER, THEREFORE, HOW THOU HAST RECEIVED AND HEARD, AND HOLD FAST, AND REPENT. In the last church-state, of which we considered the Church in Thyatira to be the type, we beheld the Christian Church suffering deeply and grievously from the errors and the oppression of Popery. We traced it during the time when that unscriptural system was predominant, and we concluded at the period of the ever blessed Reformation, when the infliction of the threatened punishment had commenced, when the Church of Rome. had been cast upon her bed of languishing, from which she never since has arisen, and from which she never shall arise, in her pristine energy and health, but shall continue wasting gradually, yet surely, until she go hence and be no more seen. The Church of Sardis, then, of which we are to speak this day, we believe to be the type of the Christian Church after the Reformation, including the present period within its limits, and stretching on even to that blessed and happy time, foretold by the prophet, when "the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea."" We commence by again calling your attention to the appropriate nature of the preface to the epistle before us. "These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars." The seven stars are, as we are told in the 20th verse of the 1st a Isaiah xi. 9. |