that Bread, that Sea, that Cloud was Christ. Christ was shadowed upon all these, and vailed beneath all these. The Clouds, Thun∣ders, Fires, Tremblings, and Earth-quakes at Mount Sinai were sha∣dows of Christ, and vails upon Christ in his most glorious Person, suffering and dying. The top of Mount Sinai, where God and Moses conversed familiarly with Faces shining mutually one upon another, being mutual Feasts one to another, was a shadow of Christ, and a Vail upon him in his Resurrection and Ascension.
Divines teach us, That the Law is the Gospel vailed, and the Gos∣pel the Law unvailed. The Jews say, That the Ten Commandments are founded upon the Name of God. The Name is the Image of the thing; Christ who is the very Image, is the true Name of God, and of all true things comprehended in God. The Moral Law, with all the Precepts and Duties of it, is Christ in his heavenly and Divine Nature in us, but vailed with the Letter, with the darkness of the Letter, yet in that darkness doth the heavenly Image figure it self, making the darkness it self a shadow of its Glory.
How rich, and how sweet is our Jesus, and the mystery of God in him, through all his works? The Law it self hath no Darkness, no Death, no Fire; so full of Dread, Horror, and Destruction, which looked upon with a right eye, is not unexpressibly beautified and sweetned by this, that Jesus Christ, with all the treasures of eternal Love, Beauty, and Joy, is shadowed upon it, and vailed beneath it. The Fathers under the Law acquainted with this mystery, con∣versed with Christ, saw his day, grew up into him through this sha∣dow, beneath this Vail, seeing and embracing him shadowed also in their own persons, and lying hid as under a Vail in their Hearts and Loins, in their Flesh and Spirit.
3. The Law prepared the way of Christ. John the Baptist, who came to restore all things to their Primitive purity, in the Ministry of the Law, is represented as an Angel sent before the Face of the Lord, to prepare his way. The Law is a three-fold preparation for Christ.
1. By Conviction, Condemnation, and Death; which all disco∣ver a necessity of Christ, make him precious, make him the desire of all Nations, make all wait for him, as the only blessed One, and their only Blessedness, Crying, Blessed is he, blessed is the Messias, the Christ, blessed is Jesus, who alone comes in the Name of the Lord, in the Form, Power, and Glory of the Godhead.
2. The Law is a preparation for Christ by the Righteousness of Mo∣rality, and of the Letter.
3. By setting Christ before us in a shadow, and under a Vail. So the Law fills up the Vallies, and makes the Mountains plain. It humbleth and bringeth down every high thing, it raiseth up every de∣jected and dispairing spirit. It turneth all reliance or glory in our own Righteousness or Strength, in our own Reason or Will, into shame. It takes away our distrust and despair, turning that into hope, and a joyous expectation. It first burieth all the beauty, strength, excellency, and life of the Creature, in a grave of Sin, Death and Wrath, as deep as the nethermost parts of the Earth, as